Fans of The Crooked Jades won’t be disappointed by the latest issue from this remarkable group of musicians and I’m convinced that their newest CD, Empathy Moves The Water will quickly be added to existing collections of their music. Empathy Moves The Water will be the ninth album from the group since their debut album in 2000, and true to form, The Crooked Jades are alive and thriving and they just may have produced one of the best Americana albums of 2018.

Fred Neil co-founded (with conservationist Ric O’Barry) the Dolphin Project on the first Earth Day, April 22 in 1970. Everybody’s Talking is a wonderful tribute album to Florida folk music legend Fred Neil. All net proceeds from the sale of the album go to the Dolphin Project.

If you have ever wondered why preachers of yore routinely railed against fiddle and banjo music, this record explains it exactly. Every downbeat encourages fornication, every backbeat compels another drink of whiskey, every tune puts your very soul in jeopardy. Holy Smoke! is old-time music in its perfect form, tight fiddle and banjo, Africa and Europe in equal portions, a completely traditional modern culmination of the first truly American music.

Old World Music of the Southern Appalachians is the 4th release from Old-Time duo Hog-Eyed Man; featuring Clifftop fiddle champion Jason Cade accompanied by talented multi-instrumentalist Rob McMaken. Jason grew up learning older fiddle tunes and styles from Bruce Greene in Yancey County, North Carolina as well as from his mother’s teacher Byard Ray. Rob hails from north Georgia and provides a solid, engaging back up with chording and melodic lines on mandolin, guitar and lap dulcimer.

I don’t know why I felt a loss when I heard that Michael McGinnis has moved from California to Washington State, but I did. A man’s life and work are not defined by geography, but I will miss his presence at folk music gatherings here. Who is he? He’s certainly not at the top of folk music stations’ playlists but to me, when someone says the word ‘folksinger’, Michael’s image pops into my head as quickly as the image of a steaming pizza does when someone says the word pepperoni.

Much has been written about Sunny War (nee Sydney Lyndelia Ward) and I doubt that much repetition of her life history and musical odyssey here would add to what has already been written. For those of you who are reading the name Sunny War for the first time, suffice that she began her career as a street singer in Nashville and came to full flower in the southern California Venice Beach street and boardwalk community. For a complete picture, I’d recommend that the reader who is encountering this remarkable woman for the first time on these pages turn to an internet search and the myriad reviews and profiles there for a full recognition of this truly genuine and deserving artist who has been categorized as a blues artist, a punk artist, and a soul artist. All correct.

The new, self-titled Mike Bryant and Paul Brown with Marcia Bryant and Terri McMurray is the first release from 40 year Tennessee fiddler Mike Bryant accompanied by banjo virtuoso Paul Brown; fresh from his own CD/DVD Old-Time Tiki Parlour release this past April (see review) Keeping it all in the family, the duo are joined on this record by Mike’s wife Marcia on guitar and Paul’s wife Terri on baritone & banjo ukulele.

I received my copy of Paul Brown’s eponymous DVD/CD release with Tiki-Parlour Recordings (the brainchild of David Bragger and Rick Hocutt) in the mail last week and fired up the DVD player immediately.

I was watching it, trying to come up with profound words to describe it, like “homey” and “mellow”, but in the intro to the set, celebrated novelist and writer on American music, Tom Piazza sums up Brown’s first solo banjo and fiddle outing by saying “It’s the understatement of the year.”

You can use the finest cookware available, a trusted recipe, but without quality ingredients and someone who knows what they are doing, it’s impossible to bake a cake that’s any good. Same goes for any quality dish.

Now let’s talk about Low Lily and their new recording,10,000 Days Like These. Although they do take turns singing lead, each voice is a main ingredient - quality you recognize as soon as it hits your ear - mellow and easy, comfortable and comforting.

Tracy Newman is one of my oldest and dearest friends. My temerity in breaking tradition and attempting an objective review of this album is eclipsed by the truth that regardless of friendship, Tracy Newman’s creative abilities have occupied the top rung of my esteem for quite some time. I am blessed with talented friends and have been so throughout my career. Simply posited: might I be prejudiced by our friendship? Most likely! I’ll take what comes of it. OK? Now read on…

It was three years ago next month that I crashed my first Old-Time jam session. I loaded my mandolin and meager repertoire of a dozen Old-Time tunes and nervously headed down to MacLeod’s Brewery in Van Nuys. What I encountered was a welcoming, gracious community of Old-Time musicians of all possible levels and it was just sheer dumb luck that David Bragger and Susan Platz sat down next to me at this first jam. I was absolutely blown away by the tight double fiddle tunes that the two of them played and I recall asking Susan if she was familiar with the classic Nonesuch record Folk Fiddling of Sweden of twin melody and harmony fiddling. She was not but even three years ago, you could hear the foundation being laid for what would become King’s Lament, the first recording of exclusively Old-time fiddle duets.

Have you ever heard the booming “WAOHH” of a huge ship coming into port? From the first enveloping, opening strains of Billy Kemp’s fine new album Another Life you know that something profound is coming ~ and something is, with a depth and melancholy that matches the grandness of that sound of the Harbor. This song announces to you that you are indeed near the deep water of memory: in this case the clear and deep memories of growing up in Baltimore, where much of this collection of great new story songs takes place.

There’s a new benchmark for singer/songwriter greatness, and her name is Katy Moffatt.

I discovered this evening, while driving across town, that it is unsafe to listen to her album while in motion. I put her new CD Where the Heart Is in my CD player and after every song found myself applauding, my hands off the wheel—and my car drifting over the yellow line before I could replace them and move back. It was disconcerting; I tried to keep this in mind as the CD kept playing, but every song had the same effect. Katy Moffat, like Ralph Nader once wrote of GM cars, is unsafe at any speed.

From the first note she sings on her new CD, The Oxygen Girl, Jeni Hankins can’t be mistaken for anyone else. Jeni was born in Jewell Ridge, a Virginia Coal mining town in the Appalachian Mountains, yet despite her subsequent education and sophistication, she’s your best pal sharing a song and a cup at the kitchen table. Friendly, warm, West Virginia daughter, real.

Trevor and Travis Stuart were born and raised in rural, western North Carolina where the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains meet. Their hometown of Bethel (one of three in North Carolina) in Haywood County, hardly shows up on a map, but this region of greater Appalachia has long been known as a hot bed of traditional music. The twin brothers grew up immersed in this rich musical culture and have played together since early childhood, forming their first band in junior high school to play for local clogging teams and festivals. Both individually and together, the brothers have gone on to play worldwide and are especially known, and greatly admired for their tight fiddle-banjo duets. This CD/DVD release by the Old-Time Tiki Parlour is a testimony to their lifelong partnership.

“Just say the words. Tell the story. Play a little bit of guitar.” —Ramblin’ Jack Elliott

Buellton California’s resident folksinger-songwriter is not trying to change the music business, or even really trying to be a part of it. He just does his own thing in his own time. Recorded simply, in his garage, (No Commercial Potential World Headquarters) playing and singing at the same time, without a click track or Autotune, Lamb creates earthy, honest country-folk music rooted deeply in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Cisco Houston. In today’s climate of mind-bending sonic overproduction, Lamb’s simple DIY recordings are refreshing and maybe even a little revolutionary in their own humble and folkie way.

When I was asked to review Spencer & Rains CD/DVD release The Spotted Pony last year, I was neck deep in my own journey absorbing early Appalachian music and not knowing much beyond “contest-style” Texas fiddling, was not particularly interested. That said, I gave it a listen and was instantly, for lack of a better word, “smitten” with the sublime music of this husband-wife duo. When they gave a concert in Los Angeles with their full band “The Skeleton Keys,” this past February, I bought their entire catalog; something I haven’t done in 30 years and honestly, these 5 records have dominated my playlist rotation all year.

Remove one word from the title—Across the Amerikee: Showpieces from Coal Camp to Cattle Trail—and any old folkie with a banjo and guitar could have made this record. Just take out the word “Showpieces” and I could have made it. But Stephen Wade and only Stephen Wade could have made it with that stop the show word right in the middle of it. Every track on the album would have been the highlight of any other performer’s record.

Sweetness, lightness, kindness, gentility, joy, love. Boy howdy, we sure could use a little of that stuff these days. When it seems all the news is bad and every jangled headline serves only to drive us ever deeper into despair, I often feel like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant when he screeched, “Does anybody remember laughter?” Fortunately for us, Jackie Morris not only remembers, but holds an abundance of laughter, love and joy in her heart which she deftly shares with us in her fifth studio album, Periscope Heart.

Folk music is so many things. At its best, it’s joy and pain and wisdom and catharsis sung to express, comfort and ultimately heal through the power of simple music. With the release of The Last Kind Word, her first solo album outside of the groundbreaking Los Angeles old time trio Triple Chicken Foot that she co-founded, Kelly Marie Martin has laid this very beautiful collection of original songs on the world.

In the world of Western music, Grammy-award nominee Joyce Woodson needs no introduction ... a quintessential “cowboy poet” with a voice of liquid loveliness. Named “Songwriter of the Year” by the Western Music Association, she has written timeless songs of Western life, covered by a score of other artists. But her fourth album, Living The Western Dream, will surpass even the highest expectations of her fans.

In troubling times, a voice of simplicity, humanity and compassion can go a long way to help soothe the worried and weary, be a salve to the soul and give hope where hope is running thin. It is in precisely these times that I find myself in my truck listening over and over to the new CD by Donna Lynn Caskey The Love Still Shows.

Years ago I visited painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser in his Venice (Italy) studio. I was surprised to see canvases lining the walls in all sorts of styles – not just the colorful spiral and raindrop paintings he was well known for at the time.

“My gallery owner prefers that I stick to one style. He believes that is what art buyers want from artists: a consistent identity,” he explained to me. “Sadly, I cannot even bring these other works of mine into the gallery.”

This marketing identity demand bleeds over to all art forms: too often writers, filmmakers, composers, songwriters – all creators – are pressured to create in one style and stick to it.

Profound and poetic, Carrie Newcomer’s 16th album, The Beautiful Not Yet, soothes the soul as it stimulates the senses. Capturing the mystery and miracle in the everyday, the songs are at once spiritual and down to earth, filled with wisdom and heart.

If you simply read the lyrics on her website, you’ll find the words read like poetry. But in truth, even if I didn’t understand a word of English, I would still think this is one beautiful album. The primary reason is Newcomer’s voice – that celebrated, rich contralto that is so luscious, warm and honest, so natural yet perfectly nuanced, that it makes you feel good just to listen to it. Additionally, The Beautiful Not Yet features an array of gorgeous harmonies and an exciting blend of traditional roots instrumentation (banjo, acoustic guitar and mandolin) and chamber music (cello, violin, and piano).

Britta Lee Shain’s second CD, What the Heart Wants, should come with a warning label: “This album may be addictive.” In truth, I cannot stop listening to it. Shain’s unique brand of cool, bluesy folk-rock is more than “that good.” It is compelling.

The album was released in tandem with the publication of Shain’s new book, Seeing The Real You At Last: Life and Love on the Road with Bob Dylan, a personal memoir chronicling her time with the folk icon in the 1980s. (One of the songs is a co-write with him, another is a cover of one of his latter-day (1997) hits, and still another … or others … are about him.) But regardless of this intriguing liaison, I have to emphasize that these songs stand on their own. And then some.

A new love letter has been written, this one to an entire family and its American ancestors, replete with stories and new songs: Jeni & Billy’s new CD Heart of the Mountain, 200 Years of An Appalachian Family.

I’ve written before in these pages about the work of the Nashville-based Appalachian duo Jeni & Billy. This new entry in their catalogue released this spring is a concept piece, an historical retrospective of family history with songs written to celebrate a few generations of lives and events. The twenty-seven tracks contain both spoken word and music, illuminating the 200 year history of the Smith family in Virginia.

If you look up the definition of the Great Plains, it describes the large expanse of predominately flat prairie & steppe grasslands, stretching from southern Canada, across the American Midwest to the Texas-Mexican border; framed by the Mississippi River on the east and by the Rocky Mountains on the west. This broad geography has been home to Native American tribes, European explorers, freed African-American slaves, pioneers and homesteaders and it is from this rich musical landscape that husband-wife duo Tricia Spencer & Howard Rains take their repertoire and inspiration on The Spotted Pony.

From Maui to the mainland, Jim “Kimo” West has forged a reputation as a slack key guitar player worthy of kudos from Hawaiian masters of the open chord playing style based on dozens of mood-tinged tunings. George Kahumoku has invited him to play in the legendary Slack Key Show in Maui.

For the past 20 years, Solas has blurred the line of modern and traditional Irish music. In their new album, All These Years, they blend traditional and contemporary tunes, American and Irish music, and even rock with traditional Celtic energy. Moira Smiley, the new singer, joins the long standing members consisting of Seamus Egan (flute, tenor banjo, mandolin, whistles, guitars, bodhran), Winifred Horan (fiddles, vocals), Eamon McElholm (guitars, keyboards, vocals) and, Mick McAuley (button accordion, vocals).

A true Celtic gem! Nuala Kennedy’s fourth solo album, Behave The Bravest – Traditional Music from Ireland, Scotland, and Beyond - is a brilliant display of the acclaimed singer and flutist’s multi-faceted talent. The album, recorded over six months on three continents – while Nuala was on tour with her band in the U.K., Australia and the U.S. – provides a lovely mix of traditional music with an excitingly fresh sound. There are ancient ballads...a waulking song, sung in Gaelic...love songs from Scotland and Ulster...a contemporary Celtic instrumental...and two instrumental medleys, one of reels and the other of jigs.

Last summer, the trailer for this latest release from the Old-Time Tiki Parlour started showing up on social media. It opens with black screen audio of Bruce Molsky blazing through the classic fiddle tune Old Sledge followed by a seemingly audacious quote from Darol Anger, a founding member and fiddler from the David Grisman Quintet; declaring Bruce Molsky to be “The Rembrandt of Appalachian Fiddle.”

On first glance, the accordion and the acoustic guitar have little in common. The first is a large, hulking affair strapped on to the musician who negotiates its keyboard or buttons to achieve various pitches and manipulates bellows to control tone, timbre, and dynamics. The guitar, on the other hand, seems to melt into the musician’s body as tones are teased out by plucking and strumming and fingers achieve dynamics and texture with direct pressure.

I first heard Eva Salina sing over 15 years ago at Balkan Music & Dance Camp in the coastal redwood forest of west Mendocino County. I can’t imagine she was old enough to drive at the time, yet there she was, confidently and deftly belting out assorted Balkan folk songs alongside considerably more tenured singers from both the Balkans and America.

David Bragger is known in the pages of FolkWorks for his column, the Old Time Oracle. His attention to the intricacies of fiddle and banjo styles, as well as the backgrounds of the tunes, has attracted many students in the L.A. area. His students are an essential core of the old-time music renaissance. His Old Time Tiki Parlour has been releasing great CDs and DVDs of other musicians as well as hosting concerts with these same artists. His new CD, Big Fancy, features twenty-one tracks played on his great uncle's fiddle and on banjo, and pump organ. He is accompanied by his Sausage Grinder bandmates:

David Bragger has filmed this superb 18-cut performance DVD of Berkeley's Eric and Suzy Thompson. The intimacy of the video puts you up close and personal. It's a bit like attending a concert and sitting a foot or two in front of the performers. The extensive liner notes also help you to get inside the tunes and songs. Not many musicians can play such a wide range of genres and maintain such a high level of excellence in each one, but Eric and Suzy are definitely up to the task.

The Sunny Mountain Serenaders comprise three great old-time musicians who play very well together. I have known all three for a long time. Mark Campbell is a Virginia fiddler who has won the prestigious fiddle contest at the Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia. Mac Traynham, who plays banjo and harmonica and sings lead has won both banjo and fiddle at Clifftop. John Schwab has played guitar in many great bands and has written a book on old-time backup guitar. John sings harmony. They offer a generous 18 selections on this, their first CD.

The Red Squirrel Chasers first formed about a decade ago to play dances. Now, they have combined their formidable talents into this new recording of 16 tunes and songs. The four members of the band are fiddler Stephanie Coleman, mandolinist Jim Collier, guitarist Jim Nelson, and bass player Dedo Norris. All four sing, though Collier and Nelson sing all the leads and most of the harmony. Their musical interests span the genres of old-time music and early bluegrass.

One of the most exciting folk groups to come out of Canada in recent years, Red Moon Road brings an irresistible blend of energy, charm, story-telling, and musical virtuosity to their songs that makes you want to hear them again and again. With wonderful melodies punctuated by spot-on harmonies and upbeat rhythms, their second album, Sorrows and Glories, is as refreshingly original as it is inviting; as ideal for careful listening as it is for just driving in your car and not minding the traffic so much.

Once, when I was at a concert, I overheard someone say (about the artist), “She could sing the telephone book and it would sound amazing.” That’s the kind of voice that Erin Montgomery brings to Duet 2 It. And her abilities are matched, on lead guitar, by her partner, Chris Roullard. Together, in Hurry Up and Wait, this young duo has created a debut album that fairly explodes with talent, vitality, and a sophistication that belies their years.

Scottish fiddlers interpret traditional music different ways: some play all traditional session tunes note-by-note, others take basic elements of the style and write entirely new compositions, and yet others mix the two ideas into their own sound, playing both traditional tunes and originals. Jenna Moynihan does this in her new CD, Woven, while incorporating Appalachian bowing patterns as well as old-time cross tunings throughout the entirely instrumental CD.

This wonderful recording was made at the Deep End Ranch in Southern California, north of Los Angeles. Jesse is the son of West Virginia musician and folklorist, Gerry Milnes. Emily also has strong musical roots; in fact, I reviewed a great recording of her with her mother, Valerie Mindel, a few years ago. Emily is lead singer and a fiddler in the Sweetback Sisters. They have been playing together as a duo for about a decade and that shows in how well they work together. Both sing, both fiddle, and both play guitar, all very, very well.

Mandolinist Henry “Butch” Waller has been leading the SF Bay Area band High Country since 1968. His latest recording is a collection of six waltzes, all his original compositions. Five of them are instrumentals; Golden Gate Waltz is sung by Butch with his daughter, Juniper.

Every once in a while I hear a voice whose sheer beauty stops me in my tracks. Such was the case the first time I heard Ana Egge in Bright Shadow. Ethereal yet down to earth, simple yet sophisticated, her soft, silky vocals seem almost effortless, whether she’s delivering a cool jazzy number or traditional, up-tempo Americana...a poignant ballad or a moody singer-songwriter original...as well as, of course, the edgy Lucinda Williams-style folk rock that distinguished her last album (produced by Steve Earle).

Swinging saloon doors, blood on the floor, revolvers and card games gone bad… This is Run Downhill’s west, a place where a thrillingly lawless musical landscape à la Ennio Morricone can intersect with lyrical foreboding. This, the band’s fourth album, takes listeners into a darker world that asks: what happens to a mind subjected to constant skirmishes for survival?

For those blessed enough to have journeyed through the nocturnal aural wonderland that was Noctambule’s (Marla Fibish and Bruce Victor) first recording, the question was inevitably, what happens when we awake from this intoxicating, mind altering musical dream? And here is the answer in the form of their second recording. The Waking takes us into a daytime world where all is changed; colors sharper, shadows deeper and clearer, sounds richer and more resonant with meaning and emotion, where time becomes malleable, now syrupy, now supple, now misty and ephemeral. This is magic.

With their fourth studio album in six years, Tangled Country, The Honey Dewdrops continue to weave their addictive sound...even as they branch out from their Appalachian folk roots into Americana, blues and singer-songwriter genres.

Characterized by compelling, earthy harmonies – so tight that they often sound as if one person is singing in two compelling voices – The Honey Dewdrops are comprised of a young, multi-talented husband-wife duo, Kagey Parrish and Laura Wortman.

Stuart Mason is from West Virginia but lives on California's central coast. He calls his music “oldternative” which is a good word to describe branching from old roots into unusual spaces. You can hear that in the arrangement of Red Rocking Chair with traditional lyrics and banjo but unusual harmonies and Tony Furtado's slide guitar. Ryan Davidson, who coproduced, plays bass on most tracks. That tinkering with tradition continues with Jesus Met the Woman in the Well on which Mason plays mandola and Tony twangs again. On Gospel Plow, which has a more old than alternative sound, Stu returns to banjo and Amber Cross adds strong harmony vocals.

Today, many artists feel the need to record only the music that they have composed; for many, this works. The same holds true in the world of children's music. For every CD that stands out, there are two that are just mediocre.

Among the best we have Malvina Reynolds, Ella Jenkins, Jose-Luis Orozco, Suni Paz, Marcia Berman, Patty Zeitlen, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and “Uncle Ruthie” Buell. Their music and stories have withstood the test of time.

I first received my copy of Leslie Beauvais 's new CD Chemistry about 2 weeks before it was officially released. I had heard Leslie sing backup vocals for Severin Browne and a few times with Jaynee Thorne at John Zipperer and Friends concerts.

My first impression of her voice was very positive. Although I mostly heard harmony, she had good breath control and a pretty good range - Alto to High Soprano. When I heard that she was working with Ed Tree to produce her new CD, I was an instant fan and preordered through her social fundraising attempt.

Richard Berman is one of the great masters of the story-song. And his new seventh album, You’re Home Now, just might be his best work yet. This is no small compliment...as decades of critical acclaim, multiple awards, and Folk DJ “favorite” lists can attest to. Poetic yet always relatable – intimate, thought-provoking, and entertaining – his songs draw you in with lovely, haunting melodies and hold you with beautifully understated feeling.

There are times when travelers on different paths meet at a crossroads and discover they have been brought together for a purpose. Connections are forged because each knows the road ahead is right and true. Such is the case with the band the Ne’er Duwels: four accomplished musicians who have joined together to create a solid recording.

Ken O’ Malley from Dublin, Ireland, is the lead singer of the band. Ken has entertained audiences for over 30 years, and is one of the most well-known and beloved Irish folk singers working today. His rich voice and skillful guitar work are fueled by deep passion for his people and their history. Ken pours his soul into every word he sings, every measure he plays, and the music of the Ne’er Duwels laughs, breathes, and aches with his dedication.

For those of us whose first musical love was traditional and neo-traditional folk ballads, the brand new debut album by The MacMammals provides a welcome, refreshing return to the simple beauty of this genre. Garnering songs from Ireland, Scotland, England and North America, Keeping Up with the Heard is authentic, acoustic, and moving; a collection of wonderful songs, tastefully arranged, while still achieving a very full, satisfying sound.

The Foghorn Stringband began as five guys playing hard-driving old-time music. Two of them, Caleb Klauder and Sammy Lind, formed the Foghorn Duo. Nadine Landry then joined on vocals and bass to make them a trio. Reeb Willms added her guitar and voice to make the Foghorn Stringband what it is today. All four sing powerfully, and they play hard-driving music featuring Sammy's fiddle and Caleb's mandolin, among other combinations. This is the eighth Foghorn release, and it certainly lives up to the standards the band has set for itself. It was recorded in Hawaii, but it's full of hard-driving music and edgy singing.

Headlines about the recent violence in Mexico only tell half of the story. In Lila Downs’ most recent album Balas y Chocolate (bullets and chocolate), the other half is given a voice.

Using her signature silky register and an arsenal of regional styles, Downs uses Spanish and indigenous Mixtec words to describe the history of violence toward students and journalists. Using the themes and symbols of the Day of the Dead, she creates an allegory for the misdeeds while capturing the feelings of foreboding that follow from such violence and manipulation. The opening line of track one prepares the listener to hear the sounds of radio Mictlan – the radio of the underworld.

Altan’s new CD The Widening Gyre is a fantastic collection of traditional Gaelic songs mixed in with Irish jam regulars. The band is joined by many special guests in this collection of upbeat lively jam tunes as well as slower songs sung by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh.

Altan is a traditional Irish band— arguably the most famous one currently playing. It was started in 1987 by Mairéad (rhymes with parade) and her late husband Frankie Kennedy. Mairéad is the daughter of Proinsias Ó Maonaigh, or Francie Moony who also contributed to traditional Irish fiddling.

After three critically acclaimed CDs in the past 5 years, it is not surprising that Susie Glaze & The Hilonesome Band have created yet another memorable album. But Not That Kind of Girl is more than just “another.” It is, I believe, their best album yet...in part because this group keeps pushing their own boundaries...challenging themselves in terms of musical diversity, original songs and fresh interpretations.

Some of Dan Gellert's early recordings seemed to have trouble capturing his unique sound and approach to old-time music. The late Ray Alden told me that he had to use two microphones, one in front and one behind Dan's banjo, to do it. This new recording from David Bragger's Old-Time Tiki Parlour succeeds on multiple levels: it has excellent sound and also comes on both a DVD where you can watch Dan play banjo and fiddle and sing and an audio CD of the same material. David told me that everyone associated in any way with its production is an old-time musician.

Long Before Light is the third CD by the Onlies, a three-piece band from Seattle. Sami Braman, Riley Calcagno, and Leo Shannon are still juniors in high school, but have played together for years, so they are a solid band. Together, they have been to many fiddle camps including Valley of the Moon, Sierra Fiddle Camp, Fiddle tunes, Big Sur Fiddle Camp, and Mount Shasta Fiddle Camp and the influence of those camps shows. It is not uncommon to walk around these camps at any time of day or night and hear people jamming and that CD reflects the same laid-black groove that develops from playing in those jams.

In case you were wondering whether Rhiannon Giddens has one of the great singing voices of our time, her new solo CD will answer that question. If you had not been wondering, it means that you probably have not heard her sing. T-Bone Burnett, who produced this collection of eleven songs, places her in a musical geneology ranging through Marian Anderson, Odetta, Mahalia Jackson, and Rosetta Tharpe.

How did Leadbelly spell his name? In the Oak Publication The Leadbelly Songbook there is a photo of a handwritten note written by Leadbelly in which he signs his name at the bottom. Guess what; he spells it as one word—Leadbelly. That’s the way almost all the original Folkways releases spelled it too—and the FolkWays tribute album A Vision Shared: the Songs and Legend of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. So why is this new and by all accounts definitive box set of Lead Belly: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection suddenly revising his own spelling?

Political correctness, pure and simple; they must think his name looks more respectable spelled as if it were two words. But as Woody Guthrie reminds us, Lead wasn’t his first name, and Belly wasn’t his last name. That was Huddie Ledbetter. And as everyone who knew him knows, Leadbelly was anything but respectable.

A work of passion and perfection, Sabrina & Craig’s second joint album, GREEN, wastes no time in sweeping you away with sweet melodies, dynamic rhythms, brilliant finger-style guitar, and the gorgeous harmonies that have become the duo’s trademark.

All eleven tracks are original –written by either Sabrina Schneppat or Craig Lincoln – and they flow easily together in a refreshing variety of styles ranging from folk to old-timey, from blues to ballads, from jazzy lounge numbers to toe-tapping Americana.

The Fifties were anything but fabulous for Frank Sinatra; he was dropped by Columbia Records in 1952, his career in the doldrums. His personal life wasn’t any better. He was divorced by his wife Nancy and attempted suicide in despair due to his tumultuous relationship with his next wife, Ava Gardner. In 1955 he released In the Wee Small Hours, a new kind of concept album, and followed it with Where Are You in 1957, an even starker portrayal of a singer at the end of his rope. In 1958 he rounded out this trilogy of unfulfilled romantic longing with Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, his third album for Capitol Records. At the edge of the abyss, in retrospect they represent Sinatra at his introspective best, before he got caught up in the Chairman-of-the-Board bravado of New York, New York and My Way.

Windows of Time is the perfect title for this beautiful collection of mostly-original songs and instrumentals by guitar and mandolin master, Mike Mullins. Sometimes playful, often poignant, his music captures the stories and styles of centuries past...while providing an overview of more than two decades Mullins’ own compositions and arrangements. The result is an album filled with timeless appeal....rooted in acoustic tradition, poetic story-songs and toe-tapping reels.

Mullins has been called a musician’s musician for good reason. Beyond his instrumental precision and quicksilver picking, there is a sweetness that runs through his music; a wistful quality in his weave of guitar, mandolin, and vocals...frequently combined with a fiddle.

Using a second-by-second countdown, a rocket launch at NASA builds anticipation and excitement; Imagine holding this level of excitement but now change the scale from seconds to years, and rockets to traditional music.

TEN. Richard Scher and Bonnie Insull, the principal members of Wildfire, have been at the heart of the Folk Dance Music scene in LA for many years.

The Duhks are back...flying higher than ever with their 5th CD, Beyond the Blue. After taking a hiatus of two years, this celebrated Canadian neo-trad folk band demonstrates, yet again, the bold, beautiful, eclectic, exciting and innovative music that has consistently earned them critical acclaim. All of their previous CDs have been nominated for Juno Awards - winning Best Roots & Traditional Album by a Group in 2005, and a Grammy nomination in 2007.

Beyond the Blue is a stunning album, almost addictive in its adventurous rhythms, harmonies and arrangements....mixing a strong Celtic base with a lot of everything else: Appalachian... old-timey....a little blues....a little soul...a French song from Mali...and a lot of driving folk-rock and Afro Cuban rhythms.

78-rpm collector Christopher King has a way of making old music seem new. Although he grew up listening to pre-war blues and hillbilly recordings, he focuses now on reissuing 78-rpm recordings from performers outside the American vernacular. What he finds is that the rawness, the spirit and the energy of the early American performers like Skip James or Dennis McGee is evident in ethnic recordings as well. In a sense, he curates the blues and country music of other cultures.

His most recent production, Alexis Zoumbas: A Lament for Epirus 1926 -1928 profiles Zoumbas’ masterful violin adaptations of Greek sheepherding music, now available on a beautiful gatefold LP with artwork by R. Crumb. An immigrant to the States from the Albanian influenced region of Epirus, Zoumbas recorded for Columbia in Prohibition-era New York City. Apart from his recorded works, very little biographical information exists about the exiled performer.

Haunting, ethereal, and totally mesmerizing, Moira Smiley & VOCO bring an almost mystical quality to both original and traditional folk music. Drawing from a deep well of influence, their fourth album, Laughter Out of Tears, moves effortlessly from Appalachian roots to Balkan polyphony to Scandinavian folksongs; and then transcends tradition on five tracks by introducing the innovative “Choir of YOU,” a technology-empowered “chorus” of 200 voices from around the English-speaking world.

The result is a kind of magic that is both subliminal and sublime, characterized by rich, complex harmonies, other-worldly polyphonic singing and sparse instrumentation. The 8 women who contributed to this VOCO release all sing (divinely, I should add) and play most of the instruments – a minimalist banjo and accordion (by Smiley), a tender cello (by April Guthrie), and plenty of body percussion. Single tracks are also punctuated by fiddle and uke, with guest artists on guitar, trumpet and percussion.

Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert and Jordan Tice are friends who, after meeting at various string band festivals in their youth, represent a new wave within the American string community. Bursting with their combined influences, You Got This is less like newgrass music and more reminiscent of works for a contemporary music ensemble. Released in July of 2014, the nine original compositions are densely packed with contrapuntal exchanges, changing meters and extended harmonies. The result: fiddle, guitar and bass at their most innovative.

From the very first blue notes of Dennis Roger Reed’s guitar, I knew I was hooked. And the vocals that followed did not disappoint. Reed has “that sound” – so casual, so fluid, so rhythmically right-on-the-money – that makes his blues-infused Country/Americana, rootsy, rock-a-billy and other “stuff” groove so immediately appealing. It’s a sound that conjures up fantasies of old-time honkytonks and gritty biker bars; yet at the same time, it’s the timeless sound of polished talent.

The Celtic Fiddle Festival, a group of three fiddlers representing different “celtic” styles, just celebrated its 20th anniversary with a tour and live CD. It is the group’s 6th CD. They did not make it to Southern California on their US tour - the SF Bay Area was as close as they came - but the CD is a fine substitute and allows for a repeated experience.

The original idea of the Celtic Fiddle Festival was to showcase different, yet related, fiddle styles and explore their historic connection. The initial group included Kevin Burke (representing Irish fiddle), Johnny Cunningham (Scotland), and Christian Lemaître (Britanny, France). After Johnny Cunningham died in 2003, his place was taken by André Brunet (Quebec, Canada). On their tours and recordings, they have been joined by a number of different accompanists over the years, most recently – and on this CD Nicolas Quemener from Brittany.

Vern Williams and Ray Park both grew up in the Ozarks of Arkansas, about five miles away from each other, but never met until moving to central California in the 1950s. Their memorable live performances and recordings in the ‘60s and ‘70s largely formed the basis for the bluegrass repertoire in California, and they became powerful influences on many aspiring bluegrass musicians. Their intensity and integrity left no doubt that they were the Real Deal.

Among those coming under the spell of Vern & Ray -- and playing in their bands on occasion -- were American roots music veterans Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick. They have been turning to Vern & Ray material since they began singing together in the mid- 1970’s, and dedicated their first duet album, Together (Rounder Records), to Vern and Ray. They now revisit these beloved songs for their newly- released (and long-awaited) second collaboration, Laurie & Kathy Sing The Songs Of Vern & Ray.

I last wrote about the Nashville duo Jeni & Billy in the fall of 2008 when I reviewed their release of that year, Jewell Ridge Coal.

Since that time, Jeni Hankins and Billy Kemp have been busy traveling throughout the US, United Kingdom and Canada, as well as recording. Their follow up to Jewel Ridge Coal was a fine studio album, Longing for Heaven in 2010, and then in 2013 they released Sweet Song Coming ‘Round which was a live-performance album collated from their 2012 US tours.

This new release, Picnic in the Sky, is quite the departure for the duo but also a revival of sorts, one of a different set of roots: big country classics that are realized in most dramatic form with a full band accompaniment and arrangements.

Every once in a while a duo comes along whose voices blend so wonderfully, so naturally, that the result transcends the individual singers, however talented they may be. Such is the case with The Copper Ponies.

The duo consists of Annie Donahue, a fresh new voice in the folk world, and Erik Balkey, a multi-award-winning, chart-topping singer-songwriter whose credits include over 300 songs and nine albums. And their debut EP, Ring Them Bells, reflects this exciting alchemy....resulting in, not surprisingly, a sound that is simultaneously fresh and well-seasoned.

The five “contemporary folk” songs on Ring Them Bells include both covers and an original (co-written) song, and serve to strikingly showcase the pair’s versatility, down-to-earth style, polished musicianship and instant appeal. But it is not the first time that Balkey and Donahue have written or sung together.

Vance Gilbert will be playing Sunday, June 29th at McCabes Guitar Shop, Santa Monica

Vance Gilbert is back with another beautifully sung and evocative album – a transcendent collection of new songs on his CD, BaD Dog Buffet – and, as Vance’s audience knows, the magic of Vance happens on stage. His live show has a reputation that precedes it.

Known equally for his vocal virtuosity and his comedic stage banter and stories, Vance has continued to garner new fans wherever he plays. In the beginning it was Shawn Colvin who wanted him on her tour. Requests also came in from Arlo Guthrie, Anita Baker, and the late George Carlin and most recently, Paul Reiser to add Vance to their shows.

Over the course of a decade in the music business, Vance has made many great recordings and BaD Dog Buffet is perhaps his finest. This time he had generous assistance from a varied list of respected guests—including Celtic harpist/singer Aine Minogue, bluegrass boys Darol Anger and Joe Walsh Jr., jazz sax player Grace Kelly, country rocker Roy Sludge, and guitarist Kevin Barry.

Good times never sounded so sweet or conveyed so much ethereal energy as this foot-stompin’, old-time, “down home”-style gem by The Honeysuckle Possums. Filled with break-your-heart beautiful harmonies, their first self-titled CD is a mix of popular traditional and standout original songs, all sung, played and co-produced by five exceptionally talented women.

The group consists of three core members – singer-songwriters Rebecca Troon, Susan Marie Reeves and Nicola Gordon (each of whom contribute original songs or co-writes, and take turns singing lead vocals) – along with bassist Lisa Macker and award-winning Flatfoot and Old-Time Buck dancer, Ruth Alpert.

Based in Santa Barbara, California, the five women are the real deal: accomplished multi-instrumentalists who have been playing together for several years now, tightening their sound as they tighten their friendship and amp up the fun. Troon plays banjo and fiddle; Reeves adds a solid rhythm guitar; and Gordon brings a ukulele and fiddle to the mix. Macker occasionally does “double duty” on mandolin or harmony vocals along with her upright bass. And Alpert infuses many of the songs with that inimitable, fast-paced, back porch percussion.

Singer/songwriter Lucy Billings’ second folk/Americana CD, No Other Road, provides a wonderful combination of “shine” and substance. From the opening measure, the “shine” – emanating from Billings’ clear inviting voice and a stellar cast of studio musicians – makes the album an instant winner. But it is the substance – the melodic flow and refreshingly honest lyrics – that makes the album enduringly enjoyable. Laced with engaging personal stories, thought-provoking themes, instrumental nuances, and interesting chord progressions, No Other Road never loses its appeal, no matter how many times I listen to it.

Released in January 2011, No Other Road was produced and engineered by multi-instrumentalist/producer, John Jennings (best known for his work with Mary Chapin Carpenter), and it boasts some exquisite arrangements. Jennings has brought together some of the top studio musicians in Americana music to play on these songs. In addition to his own acoustic and electric guitar, piano, bass, and percussion, and Billings’ acoustic guitar, the album features: .

Darol Anger is one of the giants of new acoustic music, from being the fiddler in David Grisman’s quartet more than 30 years, to cofounding the Turtle Island String Quartet, to his own current band Republic of Strings. While influenced by traditional music, his arrangements are eclectic and complex, fusing many different styles of music. The emphasis on rhythm, in particular rhythmic chops (but very complex rhythms, not just offbeat chops as a bluegrass mandolinist would do), is a hallmark of his style.

His latest release, E-and’a is a very energetic CD that follows along his path. The title is a pun referring to 16th note syncopations, as many people subdivide measures by counting: One e and-a, two e and’a, three e and’a, etc. Despite his reputation for eclecticism, this CD has a cohesive bluegrass-influenced sound, while it still hits many different styles instrumentally.

The name “Lucy Billings” is finally out of the box. With her third CD – now #6 on the Folk Music Airplay Charts – Billings has created a major album...stunning in its lyrics....with equally beautiful melodies, vocals, instrumentation and production. Produced once again by the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist, John Jennings (who co-wrote two of the songs), Carry the Water is a thoughtful album, deep as a well, with songs that are simultaneously intimate and universal. And Lucy delivers these songs in a voice that is strong and warm, fluid and resonant, taking flight effortlessly in higher registers while never losing that clear, inviting, come-on-in tone.

Billings’ rhythm guitar is solid, as Jennings weaves through her interesting chord progressions with a cool bluesy/jazzy piano and keyboards...various stringed instruments...and additional drums and percussion. With excitingly spare, sophisticated arrangements – allowing you to appreciate every nuanced note and word – the songs are primarily performed by just Billings and Jennings, including backing vocals by each of them. Enhancing this authentic sound is Harry Stinson on drums, Vince Santoro on percussion, and James T. Brown on acoustic and electric bass.

On this, her fourth album, Jackie Morris demonstrates the maturation of her craft in every way. Her delivery has developed beautifully and the songs are skillfully formulated, with pleasing melodies, spot-on backup, excellent arrangements and outstanding production.

Opening with her first-rate whistling on Come and Gone, a sweet tribute to musician friends that have departed, she establishes that ability as a legitimate instrument. It is employed as well on North Hampton Road, a haunting love-gone-wrong song.

The harmonies provided by Jim St. Ours, Cinder Jean and Rebecca Troon are subtle, well-balanced and complementary, adding greatly to the listenability of the seven tunes where they’re used.

The instrumentation is top-notch, with accomplished multi-instrumentalist David West once again supplying a myriad of support on guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro and bass. John O’Kennedy contributes some nice guitar work, subtly complementing four of the prettiest songs. Other contributors include Lorenzo Martinez on percussion, David Piltch on upright bass, Alastair Greene on resonator guitar and the no-less-than-amazing Gabe Witcher on fiddle, adding a gorgeous melodic overtone to several of the ballads.

As a freshman at UCLA in 1965 I had the good fortune to study American History with Professor Donald Meyer, author of the new book and now modern classic The Positive Thinkers, an analytic survey of the predecessors to Norman Vincent Peale’s bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking. He demonstrated that the sources of Peale’s panaceas ran deep in our culture, from popular religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy to politicians like Ronald Reagan, from 19th Century snake oil salesman to medicine show entertainers to modern TV preacher/hucksters like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. Dr. Meyer counseled a wry skepticism towards such gospels of wealth and materialism disguised as Christian values and made an alternative case for the Power of Critical Thinking to combat its promise of a one-dimensional view of individual success with counter-cultural values like community, spiritual fulfillment and the good life.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in heaven lately. Admittedly, it is not through any good deeds of mine. My divine adventures must be credited to the Janusz Prusinowski Trio.

Fully coming into my consciousness during the California leg of their U.S. tour this past October, I’ve become enthralled with the Prusinowski Trio’s music: a beguiling interpretation of traditional Polish melody and song which—while sincerely connected to the roots established by village masters—blooms with an originality, intensity and beauty that is increasingly rare in the burgeoning realm of contemporary “world music” releases.

In concert, the Trio sweep the audience into an intense world of sounds—melody, beat, drone—which create a range of visceral sensations ranging from unbridled joy to the inexplicably bittersweet. This is accomplished not only by the music, but by the excellent musicians themselves whose genuine and deeply felt expression of the music is particularly evident live.

Somewhere on the road between 2009’s Resurrection Blues and 2014’s O Love, Ernest Troost stumbled on something that slowed him in his tracks: a great live concert in early 2011 and its great live recording from McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California, ostensibly the “ground zero” location of Troost’s “epiphany” (as he calls it) and subsequent evolution to become the remarkable and award-winning folk/blues songwriter that he is today.

That live concert CD, Ernest Troost – Live at McCabe’s” (reviewed by this writer in July 2011 on FolkWorks here) was the fertile beginning of life for a few of the songs on this wonderful new studio release, O Love. The title track, along with songs Close,Bitter Wind, The Last Lullaby and Storm Comin’ were all familiar to me as I had enjoyed them so much in their live incarnations. These songs along with the newer ones have made another fascinating step on his road of epiphanies. They grow and evolve into a rowdy and, in some cases, raucous mood. He orchestrates many of his songs with electric guitars, percussion, pump organ and electric bass, producing a full-band sound that brings new and exciting epiphanies to the listener as well.

The roots of this outstanding album lie in the 1950s when those of us then alive and in our late teens and 20s attended hootenannies with Pete Seeger, Sam Hinton and others—folk was in the air. At the same time, Tanec of Macedonia and Kolo of Serbia toured the United States in 1956 giving us a taste of the musical and choreographic wonders the Balkan nations could provide, and at the same time the appearance of the Monitor albums featuring Lado, the Croatian State Ensemble of Folk Dances and Songs, and the Philip Koutev Choir all combined to create a heady time for young Americans who had never heard these sounds before. The first attempts to recreate those songs and dances resulted in the formation of a number of ensembles in the United States, largely peopled with young non-native Anglo Americans eager and thirsty for this activity. I remember several attempts to replicate Lado’s signature arrangement of Ladarke; we spent hours attempting to sing in that vocal styling that Lado so masterfully performed.

Liz Carroll is a national treasure (for several nations!) - a fiddler of unparalleled skill with a palette of emotions in her playing that could “make the rocks weep, charm the birds out of the sky, and make the raging waters dance.” This new recording is comprised of all original tunes, with one exception - the Yellow Tinker, and that played with such fire and originality that it is hard not to think of it as Liz' own. Each generation of Irish fiddlers has a few players who are so deeply rooted in the tradition that they can write tunes, and incorporate influences that enrich rather than dilute the great stream of Irish music. Liz is one of those. We can hear the echoes of her appreciation for other types of music - Balkan in the Fruit and Snoot and Balkin' Balkan, old-time on Barbara Streisand's Trip to the Saginaw and Fish ON, Nordic in Tinsel, and even swing in The Wolf.

Run Boy Run is an exciting young band from Tucson, Arizona, who last year released its first full length CD So Sang the Whippoorwill. The album name is inspired by the Mexican Whippoorwill, a nocturnal "nightjar" bird found in Tucson and the southwestern US.

Run Boy Run was formed in 2009 and won the band contest at Pickin’ in the Pines a few weeks later. In 2012, they played on stage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival as band contest winners in 2012. Since then, they have been featured twice on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion who said about them: “Hot instruments and beautiful, sweet harmony singing. That's all you need in the world today.”

The core of the band is two pairs of siblings. Brother and sister, Matt (fiddle, guitar) and Grace Rolland (cello, vocals), were raised with bow and rosin on every bedside table. Sisters, Bekah (fiddle, vocals, guitar) and Jen Sandoval (mandolin, vocals), grew up at Bluegrass festivals of Arizona. Jesse Allen (bass) was brought up on opera and western swing and grew to love the natural fusion inherent in American music. All members of the band are songwriters and penned at least one of the original songs on the album.

De Temps Antan, an energetic trio from Quebec, just released their third CD, which is entitled Ce Monde Ici-Bas. I love their first two CDs, have had their first since it came out in 2008, and have listened to those CD’s countless times. I have been looking forward to their latest release. In the age of the Internet, I could get it onto my computer the very day the band released it in Quebec. I was not disappointed; the last CD (or set of MP3s if you buy them electronically) is as good as the others and I like all three CDs equally well.

De Temps Antan are Éric Beaudry, André Brunet and Pierre-Luc Dupuis who have been exploring traditional tunes from Quebec’s musical past and performing together since 2003. All three sing (in French) and the instrumentation includes fiddle, accordion, harmonica, guitar, bouzouki and a number of other instruments. Many of the vocal tunes are in a call-and-response style. As they explain, this is typical of songs at parties where one person will sing a verse, and the others will sing the last phrase, and the refrain. There are a number of those examples on the CD.

When an album is financed entirely by crowdsourcing – as is We’re Not Lost, the newest album by The Show Ponies -- one thing should be apparent: this rootsy, folk-rock group is the real deal, with immediate, widespread appeal.

So immediately appealing, in fact, that they completed this CD within a year of finishing their last album, Here We Are! So tight and dynamic – perfectly harnessing youthful raw energy with polished musicianship – that it’s hard to believe this band has only been together since 2011.

Featuring all-original songs, The Show Ponies have literally galloped into the Americana indie arena with a fast-paced sound, evoking overtones of bluegrass and old time country music, and adding a dynamic, percussive edge. Led by songwriting collaborators Andi Carder (lead vocals and guitar) and Clayton Chaney (lead vocals and bass), the five Ponies also include three classically-trained musicians.

To paraphrase an old ad, you don’t have to be Irish… or Scottish… to love Celtic music. But if you are among the many who do, then you probably already know: it doesn’t get much better than Molly’s Revenge. With ten widely acclaimed albums already to their credit, the acoustic band has been playing to enthusiastic crowds since 2000, appearing at major folk festivals across the country and around the world.

But their new 11th album, Trio, has two notable differences: First, as the title implies, there are just three of the core members here, not the former four or five. And second, this collection is entirely instrumental.

The result, I should say from the outset, is no less dynamic, exciting, complex and engaging than any of their earlier recordings. In some ways, in fact, the “less is more” principle is at work here, in that you can better hear the musical nuances of each artist. And what amazing artists they are! David Brewer brings his infectious energy and unbridled passion to bear on the highland bagpipes, whistles, and bodhran.

This past summer, mother and daughter singing duo, Val Mindel and Emily Miller, released their second album of early Country music, Close to Home. Mindel and Miller along with Jesse Milnes, fingerpicking extraordinaire and husband to Miller, explore the tight harmonies of the brother duets, the canonic lines of Southern gospel music and the blue note slides of early Bluegrass harmonies paying tribute to the Carter family, Roger Miller, Hank Williams and the Delmore Brothers. Behind each influence and perfectly executed style, however, are poignant memories of their family history, offering the only possible explanation for how such old songs can sound so contemporary and alive.

Both Mindel and her daughter have traveled all over the world performing and educating on early Country harmony singing. Apart from their work together as educators and performers, each has a finger in various Old Time pies. Miller and Milnes play with their Country band the Sweetback Sisters and Mindel plays around the country with different groups such as the California based group, Any Old Time. However, it is in this family setting that the nuances of many years of making music together can be heard.

A mood is much more than a just a feeling. In its richest sense it signifies a gateway to a different world with its own scents and hues; its own vistas, characters, and possibilities. This is an album that creates that kind of mood. Noctambule draws us into a world of night journeys, of shadows and sadness, of deep truths and deep feelings, of beauties unseen in daylight, of whispers and dreams, of terror, loss and redemption. Most of the songs here are musical settings of poetry by Robert Service, Theodore Roethke, Pablo Neruda, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The arrangements have the kind of genius that reflects lives lived fully, souls not unscathed, but with glittering musical imaginations grounded in joyful glorious experience. The playing is simply beautiful, and the interplay between Bruce Victor's moving, deft yet muscular guitar playing and Marla Fibish's always magic mandolin reminds me of watching two strong dancers moving together, creating so much more than the sum of the parts.

The Onlies are a group of three teenage musicians from Seattle. They just released their first recording, Setting Out to Sea, which is an enjoyable mix of traditional fiddle tunes and their own compositions (including both instrumentals and songs). Traditional tunes are from Scotland, Ireland, Cape Breton, Quebec, and America and those styles are reflected in their own compositions, while their songs have similarities to early Nickel Creek. The band members are Sami Braman, Riley Calcagno, and Leo Shannon, who are sophomores in high school and have played together for most of their lives.

The Onlies have performed a lot of gigs recently, including a tour of the West Coast last month. The tour started with a house concert in Portland, Oregon; then in California: Rio Dell; Berkeley; Cottage Grove and a contra dance in Palo Alto. While in California, the three of them spent a week at Alasdair Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling Camp in Santa Cruz. Unusual for many bands, but a really excellent training ground for traditional musicians, The Onlies regularly play square dances in the Seattle area.

Lily Henley's EP Words Like Yours is soothing, frenzied, sacred and profane all at once. Electrically imagined but acoustically delivered, one could call it a fusion of Sephardic Ladino melodies and Scotch-Irish fiddling. More accurately stated - it is an expression of a young woman straddling her ancestral cultures, spontaneously manipulating her inborn musical impulses.

Hailing from New York City, the New England Conservatory graduate developed her Scottish fiddling influences in the Boston string band. Following a transitional period, she moved to Tel Aviv where she met Omer Avital, a renowned jazz bassist who had long been drawing inspiration from popular Israeli folk tunes. Henley was moved by how Avital used his Western musical training to elaborate on popular Israeli folk tradition and it wasn't long before she envisioned how the Ladino songs she knew as a child could be coupled with her Celtic and Americana upbringings.

I am a die-hard Bruce Molsky fan and have a true jones for his fiddling. For him to do wrong, he would have to do something really weird, like an Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks-style Hawaiian slack-key klezmer album. Fortunately, he’s not done that.

If It Ain’t Here When I Get Back is an album of what Bruce Molsky does best: bare-bones simple American folk, with a solo Bruce playing fiddle, banjo, and guitar and occasionally singing. It’s brave music. A musician’s mettle is proven in solo work, and Molsky proves he’s a pro at deceptive simplicity. Not an out-of-tune note, not a missed chord, and acoustically true.

The music is unpretentious and gorgeous, and it satisfies, in the truest sense of the word, that craving for honesty that much popular music lacks. It sounds as though he sat down one afternoon on your front porch and gave you a solo concert.

Molsky starts the album with Wreck Of the Dandenong, an Australian shipwreck tune sung to a fiddle accompaniment.

The Battlefield Band recently played on my show the Roadtunes Sessions on KCSB FM 91.9 at UC Santa Barbara and by happy coincidence soon after I was asked to write this, my first ever, review.

The Battlefield Band has a storied history beginning in 1969 and counts as one of the bands that, along with the Tannahill Weavers in Scotland and bands like The Bothy Band and Planxty in Ireland, brought a spirit of innovation to traditional music and thereby brought this regional folk music to a much broader audience. Their latest release, Room Enough for All, continues in that spirit and the current lineup of Michael Katz, Alasdair White, Ewen Henderson, and Sean O’Donnell continue the band’s longstanding tradition of moving “forward with Scotland’s past.”

The recording gets off to a rousing start with Sean singing Bagpipe Music a song penned by Irish poet Louis MacNeice in the 1930s, that at first reminded me of a nonsense song like Bedlam Boys covered by Old Blind Dogs among others, but is in fact about, as MacNeice himself stated, the “cultural decline of the highlands” and the attendant collision between folk culture and the spread of urban culture into the rural north. Like the song In Contempt by Aaron Kramer, also on this record, but very different in presentation, Bagpipe Music takes its place in the long line of Scottish activist songs, that transcend the local and give voice to the universal struggle for justice and dignity as the times are inexorably a changin’

A creative collaboration in the fullest sense of the word, Run Downhill’s second release – Kilbourn - is a unique 5-song video EP. Composed by T.J. Troy, the songs combine incredibly dynamic, rootsy, country rockers (as well as a slow-and-dreamy instrumental) with the words of storyteller/lyricist John Castlerock. There is also a video that mixes live footage of the band with a subtly animated, campy “comic book” based on Castlerock’s story, The Carousel Couple.

To say this EP is one of kind is an understatement.

The five songs are somewhat eclectic – each a hybrid of various genres – from classic country stylings to contemporary indie rock to a lyrical, modern instrumental. But most are punctuated by captivating, upbeat rhythms and lush, tight harmonies. Of course, the engaging rhythms are not surprising, given that composer T.J. Troy is a first-class, professional drummer. On another level, however, the EP is also informed by Castlerock’s storyline in the comic book – a tragic romantic melodrama set in the Old West. Castlerock’s lyrics are a perfect match for Troy’s rhythms, utilizing unusual rhyme schemes and interesting phrasing.

Invariably, the first thing listeners do after loading in Genticorum and pushing play is to double check the list of artists. That’s because it’s almost impossible to believe that the sound you are hearing comes from just three people. There must be at least several guest musicians, one assumes, to generate the foudroyant smash of melody that begins immediately and never stops. However, we can confirm that there are in fact just three young and virtuosic Québécois musicians who make up this award-winning group: Pascal Gemme; Yann Falquet; and Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand. As if to put any doubts to rest, Genticorum (pronounced “Jawn-ti-core-um”) is releasing Enregistré Live, a live album, and it’s obvious that even without a studio smokescreen Genticorum is still pure magic.

Drawing from a wealth of deep traditional sources, Genticorum highlights the breadth of traditional French-Canadian music: from irresistible knee-bouncing reels to sinuous jigs; from rowdy call-and-response songs to haunting ballads with complex harmonies. Hidden in between the tracks of Enregistré Live(Recorded Live) one can catch snippets of their infectiously warm stage banter (in Québécois French), which is all part of the charm that has garnered them international fame and multiple awards.

They’re called Big Wide Room. When accomplished talents collaborate, and when they are individual artists with plenty of awards and recognitions, it’s worthy of taking notice. One had the “Album of the Decade” in the Los Angeles Times; another runs an acclaimed globe-spanning International Songwriters Retreat series; and the third got his start as music director of the New Christy Minstrels, before enjoying individual success.

Together, they’ve just made an album, Infinite Distance. It’s something special. Some of these appealing, evocative songs will get used in film soundtracks.

Plenty of CDs and even more artists court the elusive characterization of “eclectic” (however nebulous that turns out to be) in hopes of crossover airplay and broader exposure to listeners. It’s always a quest for music that resonates across divides of genre and generations; this album achieves that. It’s fresh, as young listeners like, and rich with well-developed melody lines and smart arrangements that more experienced listeners demand. Fans of nu-folk, acoustic renaissance music, and acoustic-based pop will find a gem here, and if radio supports it, music fans will go for it in a big way.

On his fourth studio album, urban folk musician Sam Amidon proves that when stripped bare, an old Southern ballad and a modern R&B hit are essentially one and the same. Expanding his repertory menu beyond the usual ballads and hymns to include renditions of popular Country and R&B hits, Bright Sunny South is perhaps his most mature album to date. Produced with longtime friend Thomas Bartlett (a.k.a. Doveman) and famed engineer, Jerry Boys (Vashti Bunyan, Martin Carthy), these eleven understated arrangements relate old stories to new ones and reveal how Amidon synthesizes the sounds of his urban environment through an organic process of folkloric mimicry.

Bright Sunny South - contrary to what the title suggests - explores dark, introspective themes of war, death and unrequited love from poignant perspectives of lost and lonely individuals. The variety of songs and styles achieve cohesiveness through Amidon's claim that the album is an immensely personal one, covering what appears to be the entire spectrum of his musical influences, from Irish fiddle tunes and open fifth Sacred Harp harmonies to free jazz solos and outros. Choosing to revert to the sparseness of his first album, the songs on Bright Sunny South retain the purity and precision of a live performance while still showcasing Amidon's varied musical influences.

An obscure provision of the Patriot Act has been triggered to force Smithsonian Folkways record company to release 30 major tracks from its secret tapes of vintage banjo music by some of America’s most notorious un-Americans—like Pete Seeger and his late half-brother Mike, who once described his banjo style as “non-violent,” which raised some red flags over at the NSA’s sister agency—the NCA—the National Clawhammer Association.

It is no accident that Smithsonian Folkways—with its long history of promoting Marxist minstrels like Woody Guthrie (who condemned private property in his controversial “patriotic” song This Land Is Your Land), Leadbelly (he of the infamous Bourgeois Blues pointing out that Washington DC was racially segregated), and Mr. Seeger himself, who was an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, when he hid behind the First Amendment and brazenly told them “You have no right to ask any American these questions”—is caught up in Washington’s latest scandal.

Once again, Susie Glaze & The Hilonesome Band have surpassed themselves. In their new, fourth album, White Swan, the celebrated newgrass group stretches the boundaries of their folk/bluegrass/mountain music roots to achieve a fusion of sound that is at once traditional and wonderfully fresh.

Exceptional musicianship, years of playing together, and an almost instinctive familiarity with folk roots have allowed the band to create stunning timeless ballads that sound like traditionals...exciting blends of contemporary folk, Americana and mountain music…and Celtic-inspired originals. And running through all these eclectic influences like a clear mountain stream is the pure, clear voice of Susie Glaze. In short, this is one gorgeous album – the “best yet” for a group that has long enjoyed critical acclaim.

One of the most dynamic recordings I’ve heard this year, Honey Man is the second release by Hey Mavis…featuring the marriage of Laurie Michelle Caner’s beautiful alto voice and banjo with husband Eddie Caner’s brilliant, virtuoso violin, fiddle and viola. The result, which they rightly call “Appalachian Americana,” is an intriguing variety of driving rhythms and softer songs – all featuring an exquisite interplay of fiddle and banjo, vocals and harmonies.

I am not exaggerating when I say “exquisite.” Laurie Caner cut her musical teeth in the all-woman rootsy vocal trio, The Rhondas. Her vocal flexibility – and ability to craft authentic-sounding “backwoods” harmony – is immediately apparent. Eddie Caner has over 20 years of world-class performance under his bow, touring the globe, as soloist or sideman, with over 25 major artists, including Smokey Robinson, Page and Plant, and Luciano Pavarotti. But it is the musical interaction between the two of them – an almost visceral excitement – that makes Hey Mavis so special.

Danny Kalb was one of the founders of the Blues Project, a band that referenced blues, jazz, rock, country and “world” music. Al Kooper and Richard Greene were among his bandmates. They peaked early, finding the first split in 1967, but regrouping under the same or similar names throughout the next few years. With member changes from the very first, they eventually spin off/evolve into a group called both Seatrain and Sea Train, and Kalb bowed out to follow his more blues based direction.

The Blues Project allowed Kalb to stretch out on both acoustic and electric guitar, something he still does 50 years on. Following a stroke a few years ago, Kalb regained his health and moved deeply into music than ever. Moving in Blue represents a recent project supplemented with recordings going back into the mid-1990s, with enough tunes to fill out two full CDs. Kalb sings and plays both electric and acoustic guitar. His work is notable not only for its authenticity with the older blues numbers, but also his reckless abandon on the electric guitar. His guitar work is masterful. On electric, his solos rarely go where they are “supposed to go.” His acoustic playing is sensitive where needed, and driven where needed. Kalb contributes a few songs, but a number of blues classics are re-invented.

In the Highlands of Scotland, the old Céilidh tradition is still very much alive and well. Most towns and villages have a somewhat flexible group of accomplished players and singers who get together regularly in a pub or someone’s home and make music until the sun comes up or the beer runs out. And whenever friends gather for any occasion it’s rightly assumed that music will happen at some point during the festivities.

Last winter a group of far-flung friends led by actor Kevin McKidd(Brave, Grey’s Anatomy, Rome, Trainspotting) and best friend James D. Reid got together to play some tunes and sing a few songs in a spacious house beside the river Spey (hence the name). Old friends and new were invited to play and sing, and at the end of a week they’d recorded over two dozen traditional Scottish folk songs.

When someone warms me that a film or song deals with fathers and daughters I usually steer clear. Too emotional for me, given my perhaps overly sentimental connection to my offspring. But I plunged ahead with this album, trusting Judy Hyman (fiddler in the alt-rock/folk band the Horseflies) to leaven sentiment with her usual depth, edgy intelligence and clear musicality. She and her father rewarded my faith richly. This recording is at once sweet, moody, evocative, exciting, and moving. A joyful listening experience, and one which gets the old waltz itch itching.

Judy wrote these tunes largely for friends and family and they work well as a community of pieces, but also retain such individual character. This music isn't folk music, though the violin has the kind of accessible tone and rhythm of good fiddling. The interplay of fiddle and piano brings to my mind images of a couple dancing in the air, each relying on the other to support and inspire the art of the other.

In second grade, Mrs. Duncan had me stand in the corner holding my ankles because I would not sit still. Even from the corner, I looked out between my knees at my classmates and got a few giggles and admiring comments on how red my face was and how my eyes bulged after a few minutes. I’d already done my handwriting practice, and the task of the moment was to entertain the rest of the room. In fact, Mrs. Duncan soon understood that creativity and a lack of challenging work were the source of my disruptive behavior. Mrs. House agreed to let me visit her fourth-grade class sometimes, and there I learned a technique that I still use when I think of it. The class would begin any new activity focused and attentive, but soon tended to drift into daydreaming, side conversations or mischief. The noise level would begin to rise, and the natural response would be to raise one’s voice to compete. Sometimes Mrs. House would do just that, but more often, she would LOWER her voice almost to a whisper.

Enda Seery is a young whistle and flute player from Co. Westmeath in Ireland. I had first heard Enda's playing through a few MP3 samples I had stumbled across online and later met Enda through Facebook and inquired about a copy of his CD for review. He kindly and quickly sent out an album and what a lovely album it is, too. Entitled The Winding Clock, I have to point out that this CD has one of the nicest graphic designs of any album I have seen recently, featuring several whistles protruding from an old style wind up watch (see the accompanying picture) and nicely drives home the idea of time as a common facet of Irish culture and traditional music. This is not an album of driving dance music or bawdy songs but rather a carefully crafted work by one of Ireland's finest young whistle players and tunesmiths.

This essay is affectionately dedicated to Earl and Linda Thompson of West Covina, who gave me this beautiful boxed set, thinking it might grab my attention. Thank you!

In 2009, three years before the Woody Guthrie Centennial, Rounder Records released what Nora Guthrie describes as the definitive collection of Woody Guthrie songs in one collection; a handsomely mounted box set with an authoritative book length introduction to the artist and the tracks—one for nearly every year of his foreshortened life due to Huntington’s Disease. He lived to be 55, but for all intents and purposes his creative life lasted roughly 10 years, from the age of 27, when he was first recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, to 38, when he was first admitted to Brooklyn State Hospital for the genetic illness that killed his mother.

In those eleven years he wrote—at first estimated as 1000 songs—now more likely to have been three thousand. Many of them were only preserved as lyrics, which his daughter Nora has been putting in the hands of modern folk singers and rock bands to add music and bring to life as songs. If you multiply ten years by the number of days in a year, it roughly translates to Woody having averaged a song a day for his entire creative life—a number so astonishing as to beggar description and defy belief.

Saturday, July 14, 2012 would have been Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday. To celebrate, something wonderful this way has come. This is the one you’ve been waiting for; the definitive monument to a diminutive giant—Smithsonian Folkways Centennial Collection of the Dust Bowl Balladeer’s recorded legacy drawing from both Library of Congress and Moses Asch’s Folkways Records, as well as other more obscure sources, with a hundred and fifty page coffee table-size book of photographs, paintings, illustrations, artifacts and manuscript excerpts of Woody Guthrie’s songs, prose writings and memorable epigrams such as, “Take it easy, but take it!”

There are two recorded versions of his greatest song, This Land Is Your Land, demonstrating once and for all that it did not spring fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, but was written, composed, and revised, the way any master poet would be expected to work, until Woody arrived at his six gemlike verses and classic chorus—that is now a sacred text in the wide world of American folk music. To those who still regard this unofficial national anthem (just the way Woody would have wanted it) as having been censored the editors of this magnificent book-set (to call it a “boxed-set” understates their achievement) finally dispose of this shibboleth; Woody himself never recorded all six verses—and the Smithsonian did not release what they now refer to as the “standard recording” until 1997, long after these extra verses had already entered the folk canon through the inestimable efforts of both Arlo Guthrie (to whom Woody taught them as a child) and Pete Seeger. Pete (and Bruce Springsteen) sang every one of them on the National Mall during the inaugural ceremonies for Barack Obama in January 2009; if that be censorship, let me have more of it. What makes this collection a feast for the eye as well as the ear is that their book contains a full page photo reproduction of Woody’s original master recording—with the matrix number MA-114. Indeed, the size of the book almost perfectly matches the dimensions of an LP record sleeve—a beautiful touch!

There is live music, and then there is alive music. Barn Dance, the second album by Little Black Train, is both. Recorded in the tradition of early bluegrass, around a pair of stereo microphones – Barn Dance is old-timey, foot-stompin’, non-stop fun taken to new heights by a trio of veteran musicians.

The trio consists of West Virginia native Stuart Mason, whose deep roots in traditional music are reflected in his authentic lead vocals, guitar, mandola and banjo; John Weed, whose old-time Irish fiddling style and harmony vocals carry the listener back through the centuries; and Kenny Blackwell, whose sometimes-bluesy, sometimes-jazzy, and always brilliant mandolin or guitar embroiders every melody, along with his harmony vocals.

Individually, each band member is an exceptionally accomplished musician with a long list of credentials (among which, Mason and Weed have toured extensively with Molly’s Revenge; Blackwell has collaborated with the progressive fiddler Richard Greene and the legendary Laurel Canyon Ramblers). But together, they achieve something that transcends their individual talents…an energy that will truly take you for an exciting, creative ride!

In 1989, a young man from Birmingham, England moved to Ireland in order to concentrate more fully on his passion for Irish traditional music and most specifically, on the wooden flute. Instilled with a love and appreciation of Irish music and culture from his Irish-born parents, he quickly settled into the local session scene and a few short years later released his first solo CD. That young man was Kevin Crawford and the CD entitled simply, 'D' Flute Album, quickly became a classic of the Irish trad genre and required listening for Irish flute players worldwide. Crawford went on to join the band Moving Cloud, with whom he toured and released two albums. In 1997, he was asked to join the band Lunasa, replacing departing flute player Michael McGoldrick. Crawford's addition to the then up and coming supergroup marked a turning point in the band's sound and he has remained a driving force in the group's arrangements over 7 albums as well as their frontman in concert.

So you want to learn some Irish mandolin basics, but don’t know where to turn? Irish mandolin traditionalist Marla Fibish, the mandolinist behind the Three Mile Stone and more recently The Morning Star CDs has a great solution. She’s put together an instructional Irish mandolin DVD. Usually you would have venture out to find a local Irish session (still recommended) to pick up these tunes. (It would be helpful to have a basic mandolin/music theory background to understand some of the language she uses.) But lucky for us fledgling Irish mandy players, Marla has given us a leg up by being able to learn some Irish tunes in the comfort of our own home. And I don’t know about the rest of the mandolin learning population, but it sure helps me to learn when I have a visual aid.

The DVD opens with Marla and her trademark Vintage Gibson A Mandolin (early 1920s) playing the tune Humors of Bandon and explaining how the mandolin has only been involved with Irish music in the last 40-50 years…and that it’s still finding its way. This sort of makes you feel like a pioneer. She also talks about how to develop your own “Irish” music ear by listening to different musicians and various instruments used in Irish music to develop a “feel” for this type of music.

The Minneapolis band, The Sweet Colleens, composed of five eccentric, humble and multi-talented musicians, has made rich music together since 1999. With each year and each album they evolve deeper into their unique fusion of Celtic-Cajun-Folk-Pop-Rock. Their 4th Studio release, Closer to the Sky, shares stories inspired by life experiences; gives listeners jammin’ grooves to move to and introspective ballads to be moved by.

Whether it’s a fiddle riff, an accordion jam or a bagpipe proclamation, the guys somehow keep their sound old-timey, yet still innovative and fresh throughout the 11 tracks. The album opens energetically, as lead singer Jeremy Greenhouse sings California, about a timeless place with magical air and a magical girl, amidst which the accordion rocks a solo with harmonica compliments. Oh My My My (Look at that Girl) gets funky with its hoedown-meets-sexy-song vibe. The album then turns contemplative with Look at that Moon, as a mellow waltz.

It took Israel six days to defeat a coalition of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in October of 1967 and guarantee its survival; it took Abraham Lincoln four years to defeat the Confederacy and end slavery once and for all; it took FDR and Truman four years to defeat Adolph Hitler and Nazism, the greatest evil the world has ever known.

After more than ten years and counting, America under Bush and Obama are still bogged down in the graveyard of empires, the quagmire of Afghanistan, with another two years to go, and no one is asking why.

Well, almost no one; David Rovics, a one-man musical occupation, places that question front and center in his new album, Meanwhile In Afghanistan—which speaks truth to power, both here and abroad.

Originally from Dublin, Ireland and now resident in Los Angeles for a number of years, Patrick D'Arcy is a player of uilleann pipes, the complex, bellows-blown bagpipes native to Ireland. Initially starting his musical career on guitar and mandolin, D'Arcy was at one a time a member of the fledgling Irish Folk-Punk band Flogging Molly. However as his interest in a more traditional approach to the music gained momentum he left the group to focus more fully on his growing obsession: the uilleann pipes. And obsession it was. As he began to play the pipes more, D'Arcy (whose day job at the time was web design) launched UilleannObsession.com website, which quickly became a one stop shop for information on all things piping and, along with fellow Irish expat Gabriel McKeagney, founded the Southern California Uilleann Piper's Club. Today the club boasts dozens of members and the website has become one of the best resources for both beginning and experienced pipers searching for music, sets of pipes and piping history, anecdotes and lore.

In her second, vintage-flavored, modern-folk album, I Just See You, award-winning singer-songwriter Tracy Newman reinforces what her first album suggested: She is one of the most talented story-song lyricists on the folk scene today.

This is not to overlook the refreshingly upbeat musicality of her songs – the smooth-as-glass harmonies by the Reinforcements (Gene Lippmann and Rebecca Leigh) that recall the heyday of sweet harmony in the ‘30s and ‘40s; the touch of old-time country swing in some wonderful steel guitar, pedal steel, and dobro; or Newman’s own crystal-clear vocals that are so easy on the ears. It is just that what is really remarkable in these 11 original songs are the words. The closer you listen, the better they get.

And you don’t have to “work at” listening, either. Newman has the casual, conversational style of a master wordsmith. Her phrasing never calls attention to itself; her images are never obscure. The words-and-melody all seem to flow effortlessly together. But oh, can these songs pack a punch! They are funny, engaging, touching, relatable, and insightful…some-times all at once.

Bob Dylan has just released his 35th studio album, and it’s a corker. With a title that evokes Shakespeare’s final play, are his revels now ended too? Dylan denies this tight connection to his heart, of course, and makes much of the fact that Shakespeare’s play is called The Tempest, whereas his is just the single word. Be that as it may, if this is his swan song, it’s a beautiful way to go out. Not surprisingly, it evokes the blues as perhaps the primary color on his musical palette; it starts off with a train song—Duquesne Whistle—on its final run. Dylan’s great touring band—Tony Garnier, Donnie Herron, Charlie Sexton, Stu Kimball and David Hidalgo—sneaks up on you with a casual abandon, a lilting melody with soft chords, before suddenly hurtling round the bend with George G. Recelli’s drum roll to start the rock & roll journey south. Other than this framework it has little in common with Steve Goodman’s tale of the City of New Orleans also on its final run, since Dylan’s opening song (lyrics co-written with Robert Hunter) is an impassioned love song, like most, but importantly not all, of the songs on the album.

A mesmerizing mix of primal and “cutting edge” energy, The Crooked Jades’ latest CD, Bright Land, surpasses even their critically acclaimed past six albums – sounding as if it has come straight out of the soul of “some dark holler” in Appalachia. The fact that the band – featuring founders Jeff Kazor and Lisa Berman, along with Rose Sinclair, Karen Celia Heil, Charlie Rose, and other guest artists – began at a kitchen jam in San Francisco in 1994, reflects the serious talent at play here.

Produced by Jeff Kazor, their new release is the result of a collaboration with the Kate Weare Dance Company. A boldly modern choreographer, Weare heard The Crooked Jades at a concert and was entranced by the hypnotic, haunting sound of their old-time music. She approached them with the project – to supply a musical backdrop for her troupe – and they accepted. That, in turn, led the band to reframe their repertoire…creating new arrangements to underscore the poetry, drama and mystery at the heart of each song. The result is a truly timeless recording – at once raw and sophisticated, primitive and experimental in its instrumentation, rhythms and phenomenal harmonies.

In May, 1979 a 26 year old musician in his hometown of Chicago opened a newly-minted one-man show with the intriguing title: Banjo Dancing, or The 48th Annual Squitters Mountain Song, Dance, Folklore Convention and Banjo Contest…and How I Lost. It was a farrago of traditional banjo tunes and songs, clogging and storytelling from Appalachia to Brooklyn. I happened to be teaching high school there at the time, where I had moved to become the next Steve Goodman or John Prine, and went to see it. It was the greatest night I have ever spent inside of a theatre—and the star, creator and just barely containable ball of energy on stage was Stephen Wade.

Later that year he took the show to Washington, DC at the Arena Stage for a three-week run. Ten years later, when the show closed, Wade was standing on top of the record for the longest-running off-Broadway play in America. Over twenty years later and it is still one of the top five.

You don’t often hear words like “traditional,” and “authentic” paired with “innovative” and “unique,” but Evie Ladin has brought them together brilliantly in the self-titled, debut album of the Evie Ladin Band, and the result is truly a high point in new old-time music.

If you are not already familiar with Evie Ladin’s music, don’t let the term “debut” fool you. While the four multi-instrumental band members – Ladin, Keith Terry, Dina Maccabee, and Erik Pearson – have been playing together for three years, they are all seasoned professionals. And the polyrhythmic sound of Ladin’s clawhammer banjo, her clogging, and her beautifully modulated voice, have infused five previous albums with The Stairwell Sisters, as well as the 2010 release of her highly acclaimed solo album, Float Downstream. But in the 13 new old-timey, Appalachian-flavored tracks of Evie Ladin Band, Ladin surpasses herself.

I recently “discovered” the already long discovered, multi-award-winning songwriter and humorist, J.W. McClure, when I was hosting a showcase at the 2011 FAR-West Folk Alliance Conference in Eugene, Oregon. From the minute I heard the first few measures of his popular new cat song, Blue, I knew I was hooked. And my McClure “addiction” has only gotten worse since then.

McClure plays an irresistibly smooth and engaging blues guitar, seasoned with an old-time jazzy sound. Better still, in his third album, Cowboys on the Skyline, this rhythmic, acoustic styling is accentuated by the brilliant multi-instrumentalist, Thaddeus Spae. Spae brings a big 6-string guitarron – played as an upright jazz bass – to 12 of the 14 tracks. In addition, he adds a variety of lead guitar, harmonica, back-up vocals, trombone, banjo and tuba to the album. That’s right, tuba. As I am about to tell you, this album is big fun.

This CD is made up of what can truly be considered “world music,” ranging from Irish reels to Norwegian polkas, with many detours along the way. The music is all dance music, or inspired by dance music, or inspired by the kind of music that a band would play at the end of a dance to let everyone know it was time to go home. One of the tunes is based on J. S. Bach’s arrangement of an old set of folk tunes. Other pieces are from Brazilian or Italian influences, and even a very strange Tunisian-based waltz. Each piece is worth listening to on its own, but the recording as a whole takes the listener on a quick tour to lands which might or might not exist outside the boundaries of this recording.

In addition to the relatively common banjo, fiddle, guitar, the recording includes trumpet, trombone, drums and even a nyckelharpa.

Marilyn Chambers did the X-Rated version; Charlie Rich did the R-Rated adaptation (When We Get Behind Closed Doors); but to enjoy the family friendly PG-Rated version come home to Larry Hanks and Deborah Robins’ new CD, No Hiding Place, an album of quintessential traditional and modern folk songs, including Green Door, a 1957 US hit by Jim Lowe (written by Bob Davie and Marvin J. Moore in 1956), and a hit in the UK as well by three different artists, which inspired the adult film Behind the Green Door.

Sex sells, but one does not expect it to sell records by old-time singer Larry Hanks and his wife Deborah Robins. So let’s just say their tongue-in-cheek and sweetly wholesome version of a fun-song from the nifty fifties filled with double entendres (is it a bar or a bordello?) was not intended to raise my eyebrows. But raise them it did.

The Gothard Sisters are three siblings from Edmonds, WA who perform traditional and contemporary music and dance. Highly skilled musicians and dancers, Greta (25), Willow (23) and Solana (16) have been performing and recording together for much of their lives and this comes through strongly in their music and arranging. Their new album, Story Girl, features many of the ideas and pieces the girls have developed over the last few years of a rigorous touring schedule across the U.S and Canada. All three sisters trained from an early age in the violin and while trio string arrangements are a hallmark of their playing, they are all multi-instrumentalists and singers as well as champion Irish step dancers. Because they come from a background steeped in many influences, the new album doesn’t fall strictly into any one genre but instead features both Irish, Scottish, Americana and Classical ideas intertwined in a number of self-composed tunes along with a few fresh takes of older traditional material.

With her new second album, Let the Storm Roll In, Claudia Nygaard is enjoying one of the most richly deserved success stories on the folk/Americana scene today. After years of honing her craft – performing at over 150 fairs and festivals in 47 states and across Europe, and working as a full-time staff songwriter on Nashville’s Music Row – Nygaard has emerged as an award-winning singer-songwriter whose new album has swept the Americana, Roots, and Folk Charts (actually staying on the Folk Charts for three months now).

Produced by Nygaard in 2011, Let The Storm Roll In provides an excellent showcase for her multiple talents and mastery of several styles. From quiet country/folk story-songs to old-time country roots…from upbeat love-and-heartache songs (delivered by self-described “torch singers in cowboy boots”) to social commentary…from personal ballads to laugh-out-loud humor, Claudia is a consummate storyteller. And her rich, warm voice is well suited for all these styles.

Listening to Catch the Sunset, the sixth album of Minnesota singer-songwriter, Barb Ryman, I can’t help thinking she really has caught it….in all the ephemeral beauty, the simultaneous sadness and radiance, of every sunset since the dawn of time. This is one profoundly beautiful and beautifully profound CD.

Catch the Sunset is primarily a collection of story songs in the folk tradition, and Barb Ryman is a consummate story-teller. Drawing inspiration from real life (often her own), her songs are laced with detail but never boring; never too long, and never overly dramatic – a quality that allows room for the listener to call up his or her own personal experiences. She sings them all in a high, pure voice that reminds me of the clarity I used to love in early Joan Baez recordings.

From touching songs such as Soldier’s Daughter (about the loss of her father, a navy pilot, when she was four years old)...to incisive political songs like Nursery Rhymes, there is a stunning sincerity in her voice; an unflinching truthfulness and brave vulnerability that immediately command attention.

October 4, 2011; the much-anticipated release of The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams, spearheaded by Bob Dylan for Hank William’s estate, had to take a back seat today to more urgent news about Hank Williams, Jr. Bocephus crashed the party by getting booted off of Monday Night Football, where his sun-glasses tough guy persona has reigned supreme since 1989, due to his unfortunate comparing of President Obama to Adolph Hitler in an ESPN interview over the weekend.

So instead of waking up to cheering news that major contemporary artists Alan Jackson, Merle Haggard, Sheryl Crow, Jack White, Levon Helm, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, and Bob Dylan had rescued a dozen of Hank Sr.’s lyrics that he had never had time to set to music, and created a masterpiece of a tribute album to the “Shakespeare of Country Music,” all of the attention on AOL’s Huffpost this morning went to his jackass son, who has never been shy about calling attention to himself. After all, as he put it in an old song, it’s a Family Tradition.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the acapella group Anonymous 4. They are team of four singers specializing in, though not always limited to, medieval music. During that time they have released a number of recordings including two collections of music by Hildegard von Bingen, and have been recognized as among the foremost interpreters of the music of this period; but they have also ventured into American gospel and rural folksong (Gloryland with Darol Anger and Mike Marshall). Though they had considered retiring the team in 2004, they have continued touring and recording and they are far from wearing out their welcome. If you are not familiar with their work, their website www.anonymous4.com is well worth a visit. The latest release from Anonymous 4 “Secret Voices: Chant & Polyphony from the Las Huelgas Codex c.1300” is a collection of music from the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria la Real de Las Huelgas near Burgos in northern Spain.

Double strung instruments have not been staples of Irish music for very long, perhaps only becoming popular since the late sixties and early seventies, spread by the likes of Johnny Moynihan, Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny and Alec Finn, but they have become emblematic of the resurgence and ensuing worldwide commercial success of traditional and folk music. Today, bouzoukis, mandolins, and octave mandolins, citterns, blarges, mandolas and mandocellos are found in folk groups across Europe and in the USA. Despite this success it is rare to find a recording that features only such instruments. Jimmy Crowley, Irish balladeer par excellence, and early adopter of the bouzouki, and Marla Fibish, San Francisco Bay Area based mandolin wonder, have released an album that is all double strung, all the time. And it is magnificent. Featuring the Gibson A model mandolin Marla was given by her grandfather, her mandola, and Crowley's bouzouki, mandocello, mandolin, and Dordán (a mighty bouzouki like creature with a deep and powerful bass), this recording captures the power, the rhythmic intensity, the heavenly harmonics and the sheer joy that flows from these instruments, when in the right hands. Marla and Jimmy are old friends, having toured and played together over the course of some years, and shows by this duo are always a delight.

Susie Glaze & The Hilonesome Band and the venerable Berkeley venue the Freight and Salvage. Sounds like a good match, and this recording made in July of 2010 proves it.

These folks are known for mixing folk, mountain music and bluegrass with just a smidgen of pop sheen. Susie and the band are high energy talented musicians who make great recordings, and as this recording shows, are also high energy talented live performers.

The set list mixes some songs associated with Susie’s mentor Jean Ritchie, and also originals from band member Rob Carlson. Carlson plays lead guitar, resonator guitar and provides harmony vocals. Glaze plays guitar and mountain dulcimer. Husband Steve Rankin adds mandolin, guitar, harmony vocals and lead vocals on the set closing version of Steve Earle’s Pilgrim. Fred Saunders plays bass and adds harmonies, and Mark Indictor plays fiddle. Banjo player extraordinaire Bill Evans guests on two songs. This is one hot band.

If this tangled, modern world has got you down and you yearn for the simpler, good ole’ days, tune into Caleb Klauder for the most authentic reincarnation of Traditional Country, Honky Tonk and Old Time music you’ve ever heard....and a guaranteed, high-energy pick-me-up.

In the course of the past year, Klauder has given us two new CDs that sound as if they were recorded back in the days when albums were made of vinyl and recording artists didn’t have the luxury of overdubs and digital enhancements. In fact, both his albums - Western Country, released in Fall 2010 with his 6-piece country band, and Sud de la Louisiane, released in 2011 as part of the Foghorn Trio (see accompanying review) - were recorded live in the studio. Rich with tight harmonies, honky tonk rhythm and twang, the result is visceral: both albums capture the foot-stompin’ excitement, raw vitality and spontaneous joy of a live band.

For a slice of bona-fide old-time Americana -- or, as they describe themselves, the kind of “ass-kickin redneck stringband music” you’d expect to hear on some front porch in Appalachia in the 1930s -- there is no better contemporary band than The Foghorn Trio. The Trio is an offshoot of The Foghorn Stringband, which has been together for ten years. Based in Portland, Oregon, with four albums to their credit, the up to 7-member band (depending on availability) has long been one of the brightest stars on the thriving Old Time Music Revival scene in the Northwest.

The Foghorn Trio is a distillation of this stellar group, comprised of founding members Caleb Klauder and Stephen “Sammy” Lind, and the recently-added French Arcadian bassist, Nadine Landry. All three are accomplished multi-instrumentalists and excellent singers in their own right. And they show it off accordingly: Klauder on hard-driving mandolin, fiddle, guitar and vocals….Lind on high-octane fiddle, guitar, banjo and vocals….and Landry on guitar, upright bass, and vocals. The result is pure joy.

Blame Sally is a band based in the San Francisco area. This quartet of talented women singer-songwriters came together in 2000, putting their individual careers on hold to form a group that is far more than the sum of the parts. They perform a passionate and melodic mix of acoustic folk-rock tinged Americana music with rock, Latin and even occasional Celtic flavors.

It's rare that a studio album is able to capture the vitality and exuberance of a band that is best known for their dynamic live performances. Too often, the interaction between band and audience doesn't survive the transition to the starkness of the studio. Yet, after a very successful collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Lee Townsend on their last studio CD, Night of 1000 Stars (2009), Blame Sally opted to self-produce this time, striving to capture the magnetic energy of their live performances on the CD. I'm happy to say that they have succeeded.

The luckiest fans of acoustic music on the night of January 7th, 2011 in Los Angeles were smack dab in the audience of McCabe's Guitar Shop for a concert from one of this country's landmark and pre-eminent songwriters of our generation, the great Ernest Troost. As an opener for Kenny Edwards in 2010, Ernest impressed, and this year yielded up a night unto himself, a very aptly deserved reward. Now in hand as Ernest Troost LIVE at McCabe's, this stellar new CD is the wonderful take-away from that evening's performances of Ernest's brilliant songwriting, amazing guitar work and fabulous accompanying players and singers.

As I previously wrote in these pages, "2009 Kerrville New Folk Winner Ernest Troost's newest album, the aptly titled Resurrection Blues, is a brilliant new piece of songwriting art. Its thirteen Piedmont-blues influenced songs tell stories of passion, lost love and regret-filled lives at a cross-roads, looking for a modern-day answer to 'how did things ever get this far?' and 'when did the darkness fall?'

Freebo is best recognized for the decade or more that he recorded and toured with Bonnie Raitt. In fact, Freebo is a genuine folk, rock and blues icon. For more than 30 years, Freebo has played bass and tuba on recordings and toured with some of the great artists of our time: Bonnie Raitt, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, Crosby Stills & Nash, Maria Muldaur, Ringo Starr, Michelle Shocked, Neil Young, Loudon Wainwright III, Dr. John, and many others. He has also appeared on Saturday Night Live, Midnight Special, Muppets Tonight, and in concert with the legendary Spinal Tap.

When I first met Freebo back in 1997, he had just released his debut solo album, The End Of The Beginning, and was just learning to step into the spotlight as a headliner after decades as a consummate side- man. That CD featured appearances by many of his talented friends including Bonnie Raitt, Paul Barrere, Catfish Hodge, Albert Lee, Sam Clayton and others. That CD has a variety of styles and showed great promise for Freebo's future solo career including some clever song writing, good rock and pop sensibilities developed over decades of working with some of the best artists around, and fine production by Freebo and Michael Jochum.

Forget the banjo jokes. If you’ve ever heard him play live, you know: Dan Levitt can make a banjo sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before. And this gem of a CD captures it all. With his debut CD, Fancy That! Banjo Artistry Of Dan Levitt, “the man with the golden banjo” has produced an amazing treasure trove of beautiful music, both original and traditional. On some of the tracks – if you did not know what you were listening to – you might not even realize it was a banjo!

Levitt achieves this sound with an instrument that is like nothing you’ve ever seen before, either.

A master craftsman as well as a classically trained musician, Dan Levitt worked on this 5-string banjo – on and off – for 25 years. Completed in 2003, it contains approximately 300 pieces of inlay, 800 pieces of marquetry, and numerous intricate carvings. It is, in itself, an incredible work of art.

TITLE: NEVER SEEN THE LIKE... OLD TIME FIDDLE, BANJO,GUITAR TUNES AND SONGS

LABEL: YODEL-AY-HEE RECORDS

RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 2009

BY KELLY MARIE MARTIN

What is so wonderful about old time music now is that the generation of players who picked up fiddles and banjos and guitars in the 1960s and 1970s had kids. And man, are we lucky to be the beneficiaries of the stuff on which they were raised. Never Seen the Likeis an album of "old time fiddle, banjo, guitar tunes and songs" from fiddle/banjo legend Rafe Stefanini and daughter Clelia. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Joel Savoy, Cajun fiddler in the Red Stick Ramblers (son of Marc and Ann Savoy) at Studio Savoyfaire in Eunice, Louisiana and produced by Rafe and Clelia, this album is one great product of Dynasty and I'm not talking about the TV show. Jillian Johnson, at Work Agencies designed the artwork and took the photographs for the packaging.I love the cover photo of Clelia with the fiddle and Rafe a banjo and the inside cover shot with the twin fiddlers sitting.

All Wood and Doors by James Lee Stanley and Cliff Eberhardt is one of those CDs that sounds both new and familiar at the same time, and for good reason.

The origins for the new All Wood and Doors collection go back a couple of years to when a mutual friend introduced James Lee to John Densmore of the Doors. John commented that he enjoyed the All Wood And Stones collection that was released back in 2004 by James Lee Stanley and John Batdorf. Densmore offered to participate in the project if James Lee ever did the same type of folk treatment to the Doors songs.

(All Wood and Stones is a collection of Rolling Stones songs that James Lee Stanley and John Batdorf lovingly created in an acoustic, guitar and harmony driven style. Imagine an early 1970s Crosby, Stills & Nash tackling the Rolling Stones catalog. The CD was well received and got great reviews.)

James Lee Stanley has been a staple of the Los Angeles area singer- songwriter scene for more than 40 years, releasing 25 albums since his self-titled debut album in 1973. In spite of the fact that his 1998 album Freelance Human Being was listed by Fi Magazine as one of the top 200 recordings of all time, he remains one of the great undiscovered talents in American pop music.

By "undiscovered," I mostly mean that he hasn't sold quite as many albums as he'd like! For truly he has had a stellar career with early albums on both the RCA and MCA labels and later releases on his own Beachwood Recordings label which has also released albums by other well respected artists such as Laurence Juber, Hamilton Camp and Peter Tork.

For those who have followed James Lee Stanley's career for any length of time, it is obvious that he continues to grow as an artist. His voice seems to get stronger with each release while his composition and arranging skills continue to advance. This has never been more true than with his most recent solo studio releases The Eternal Contradiction (2007) and New Traces of the Old Road (2008). I'm happy to say that his new CD, Backstage At The Resurrection (2011) continues this trend.

I've long thought that contra dance bands would make great performance bands. Actively blending popular traditions from Celtic to Cape Breton, old-time to bluegrass, with hints of Scandinavian and French- Canadian influences, contra dance bands should have laser precision and the ability to turn on a dime. Of course, the problem is that most contra dance bands are used to playing 15 minute long medleys of highly repetitive tunes, so some work has to be done to adapt a contra dance band to a concert stage. Here are three bands that have developed musical styles so tight and compelling that if they're not playing concert venues now, I hope they will soon.

Next generation contra dance band, Night Watch, come from the heartland of the tradition, New England, and sound like they've spent many a night playing for swirling lines of dancers in old, vintage dancehalls. Night Watch is one of a growing number of bands that have made the transition from dance band to concert band. Or at least, their debut album, Splendid Isolation, proves that they've got the chops to show just how powerful contra dance music can be for listeners, rather than just dancers.

It seems inevitable that the most talented of songwriters will sooner or later be compelled to do an album of cover songs. This offering by Fur Dixon and Steve Werner is a wonderful testament to the musicians that have inspired them.

The selections — legends Doc & Merle Watson and Woody Guthrie; folk heroes Jim Ringer, Mary McCaslin and the late Blaze Foley; talented local friends Randall Lamb and Dan Janisch — show not only the kinds of songs Fur and Steve like to perform and listen to but those that showcase their considerable talents.

Fur and Steve’s harmonies have always been highlights of their work. The arrangements are tight and the instrumentation just right. Steve’s guitar leads and runs add a pleasing dimension to the vocals, always tastefully applied, never overdone. On Dreary Black Hills and I Cannot Settle Down, Steve adds banjo, I imagine the one that his friends chipped in to buy him for his birthday a couple years ago, The banjo work is subdued and effective.

Johanna Divine’s Mile-High Rodeo is an instant Americana classic. Just like that! Every song gleans from a different roots music genre and adds what appears to be a Divine touch. She possesses a real knack for melodic hooks, a skill honed, perhaps, from writing jingles for local merchants in Lafayette, Louisiana, her hometown of the past several years. Then there’s the voice; not a seductive Crystal Gayle soprano, nor a lean and stern Tammy Wynette croon, but an up front mid-range that gets the most out of her Knoxville, Tennessee delivery. Divine does not shy away from any style from the Americana catalog. All songs are originals, but you know she’s been around the jukebox of country, swing, jazz, rockabilly, honky-tonk, and torch songs, absorbing a lot of that true grit from the 1930s to the 1960s eras.

I took one look at the cover of this CD and concluded that it was a shoe-in for the 2011 Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album. After five years of awarding it to compilations of slack key guitar music, the mucky-mucks could enjoy a refreshing twist on their love affair with slack key. Celebrated vocalist, Amy Hanaiali’i, who has lost out to slack key at the Grammies more than once, had teamed up with five masters of the beloved guitar tradition: Cyril Pahinui, Sonny Lim, Dennis Kamakahi, Jeff Peterson, and Chino Montero. It’s a dazzling collaboration and thoroughly enjoyable listening. Did it win the Grammy? No! This year the award for Best Hawaiian album went to a vocalist of more limited gifts than Amy and no hint of slack key guitar on the cover. Go figure! We move on...

Although it was recorded in a studio, Amy Hanaiali’i and Slack Key Masters of Hawaii has the flavor of a live concert. The musicians each get a turn being center stage, accompanying Amy, in some cases singing with her or playing slack key with one another. Not only do they display their gifts as musicians; in some cases, they showcase their own compositions.

The sun had just risen over Mount Haleakala when we mounted our bikes. Encased in a hooded ski jacket provided by the tour service, I could still feel the bite of the icy air, which began to sting my cheeks as we gained speed. But an hour later, the moonscape of the Haleakala crater seemed worlds away and the lush ranch lands of its slopes came into view. I shed my jacket and enjoyed watching horses calmly grazing in the distance. I will never forget this view of verdant Maui.

Slack key guitarist Jeff Peterson pays tribute to the place where he grew up with his Grammy-nominated CD, Maui on My Mind. The son of a paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy), Peterson has distinguished himself as a versatile soloist, sought – after accompanist- working with established talent such as vocalist, Amy Hanaiali’i – and, most exciting of all, as a composer.

Hard to define, eclectic, versatile... are the frequent descriptions Lawrence Lebo has received during and after her three volume set of releases, American Roots, which has now been fully realized with the release of last year’s final recording in the series. That’s she not he, hence the Don’t Call Her Larry proclamation and album sub-title.

After exploring Big Band blues of the 1930s and 1940s in volume 1 and then displaying her songwriting and arranging skills via the live album in volume 2, in the concluding recording, that versatility is reconfirmed in a simple yet elegant setting with Ms. Lebo accompanied, for the most part, by bassist Denny Croy (Doug MacLeod, Brian Setzer Orchestra). This is song production de-constructed and built back up for the sake of the singer and the song, i.e., it’s not about Spector’s Wall of Sound.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yes, they’ve been around for a long, long time. Ian Dury wrote a song about the lifestyle. Eric Bogosian did a one-man show on it. Too many hair bands have worn it on their sleeve or inked it on their ____ (fill in the first thing that comes to mind). But back when hooch, a snort of stardust, and carnal pleasures, were sold under the counter, down the alley, on the wrong side of the tracks, and in the back seat, songs about said vices were sung with a very thin negligee of metaphor and without the help from high definition video accompaniment. Because of strict censorship, there was a thing called imagination (read: dirty mind) which made this music titillate ones cerebellum as it traversed the tenderloin district.

The Grammy category for Cajun and Zydeco music is only three years old. A young musician from San Felipe, Texas had his first solo album nominated in 2008 and his second effort made the list in 2009. This year, he’s back again as if it’s as sure a thing as his birthday. At 27 years of age, Cedric Watson, a relative newcomer to the scene, has reached the heights of the recording arts, sharing the charts and accolades with established Cajun and Zydeco giants such as Buckwheat Zydeco, Terrance Simien and Beausoleil.

Ignoring for the most part the trend of other young Zydeco artists to lean heavily, if not exclusively into hip-hop, smooth R & B, and funk, Watson honed his skills by keeping within the guidelines established by the old school legends of Creole and Cajun music.

You have to know where the party is to find this music. Welcome to our kitchen. Put away your earplugs for awhile. – David Greely

By Joel Okida

If you take the accordion out of Cajun music and take the Cajun music out of the dance hall, what will you get? Ace fiddler, David Greely, an original member of the Mamou Playboys, lets us in on a secret most Cajun music aficionados know about, but rarely get to hear, at least in recordings or outside of Louisiana. With Sud du Sud (South of South), the fiddle has a life of its own and in a setting such as this, one gets to experience the instrument away from the din of the Fais dodo.

With help from local Louisiana talent: Joel Savoy, Sam Broussard, and Gina Forsyth, to name but a few, we get to sit on the front porch or in the kitchen, and listen to the fiddles carry the melodies and the tune without the backbeat, the accordion, a rub board, or even a triangle, dividing our attention. Only one waltz features his vocals. Greely shares with us his interests and influences by playing relatively obscure but no less compelling songs some re-tuned, others rearranged for fiddle.

Three Mile Stone are three musical compatriots playing and singing sweet, soulful Irish music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Friends for many years, mandolinist Marla Fibish, fiddler Erin Schrader, and guitarist Richard Mandel formalized their musical comradeship as Three Mile Stone several years back, and music lovers are the better for it. There is an easy, trance inducing lilt to everything on this recording, even the driving (and they do drive!) tunes. Lots of love in these notes.

Lots of chops, too. Erin is a rare fiddler of taste and emotional tone with a sense of space and roots in her playing that is quite beguiling. And Richard is her match on guitar, with a lightning right hand and spot on chord choices. He is also a precise and powerful tenor banjo player.

For obvious reasons, I should not be reviewing Uncle Ruthie's new double CD; full disclosure: we have been friends for twenty-five years, she has cooked noodle kugel for me, I have sung at all of her husbands' memorial services, she has confided in me about each of her boyfriends and assured me that the only reason she was interested in them is because I wasn't available, and I have been a guest on her classic KPFK radio program Halfway Down the Stairs for more times than I can remember-usually losing a nights' sleep to get there at 7:00am to prepare for her 8:00am start time.

Thus, not only is objectivity out of the question; I am not even able to be impartial, or anything less than avowedly pro-all things-Uncle Ruthie, due to the simple fact that I love her.

The ‘ukeke is a small, three-stringed Hawaiian instrument made of koa wood, plucked while held in the mouth, which acts as a resonating chamber. Its otherworldly pulsating sound would not bring to mind John Lennon. But in the first 12 beats of Keola Beamer & Raiatea, a lone 'ukeke ushers in the opening notes of Imagine. Played by Moanalani Beamer (Keola Beamer's wife and ensemble member), it keeps solemn time while Keola Beamer and Raiatea Helm perform the song in beautifully intertwined Hawaiian and English. Keola accompanies their vocals in his signature slack key (ki ho 'alu) guitar style and the Spring Wind Quintet enriches the arrangement. Hawaiian chanting (oli) by Charles Ka'upu brings this unique version of Imagine to a close. The effect is of a universal hymn.

Neil Young is always willing to take things a little further along than the rest of the pack. While many roots artists are still catching up with the Cash/Rubin era of bare-to-the-bone acoustic recordings which began in the 1990s, Young has released Le Noise with the considerable visionary support of Daniel Lanois (even the album's name seems to echo a tribute to the great producer who has recently recovered from a life-threatening motocycle accident) and has given us a singular stripped-down distortion-driven album; lyrical and vulnerable, with studio effects commonly used to shield rather than expose. The success of La Noise hinges on the writer's ability to engage and the artist's willingness to risk, something Young has been doing for decades with sometimes stunning successes and failures

By the time I realized I wasn't listening to a Segovia
record, I remembered what a masterful finger-style guitar player Craig Lincoln
is. Seconds later, I remembered the beautifully tight harmonies that I have
come to expect when Sabrina and Craig sing, and the opening song, Sabrina's Make You Mine demonstrates that
wonderfully.

Craig's humor abounds in Little
White Lies and the painfully cute Cats
& Dogs, while Sabrina's shines in Help
Wanted and her car song, Mine All
Mine.

The title track is hauntingly melodic and the lyrics parse
the Chinese symbol for love. "愛" consists of a heart, inside of "accept,"
"feel," or "perceive," and it may also be interpreted as a
hand offering ones heart to another hand. A very imaginative message as well as
a beautiful composition.

You haven't experienced the full aesthetic potential of If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof until you have heard The Temptations' rendition of the Broadway favorite. You can dig-a-dig-a-dum this and 14 other recordings of Black artists interpreting Jewish content in Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations, a CD released this September by the Idelsohn Society, an organization dedicated to collecting and preserving precious old recordings with Jewish content and exploring their significance.

This collection, packaged in a handsome mock-book with ample liner notes, can be appreciated on many levels. There are masterful interpretations by luminaries such as Billy Holiday, Alberta Hunter, and Cannonball Adderley. There are songs that stir memories of an era of American history or a state of American race relations that seems long past yet resonates emotionally. Some cuts may even provoke a negative reaction.

The ever chameleonic Fishtank Ensemble have once again added more colors to their palette, spilling over into a pastiche of songs, traditional and new, retaining their own style, but honoring the sources. This is an epic musical variety show except all the performances are performed by four talented musicians and some added guests.

Their third recording, propagated from a group pared down from 2007's Samurai Over Serbia, is Woman in Sin. There's nothing like a live show by Fishtank Ensemble, but if studio production loses some of the visceral of the powerful group's 3D presence, it does allow for insightful listening where one can bear audible witness to the group's attention to detail on each of the twelve tracks, not to mention the wide range in which they can operate.

Fans of the Vermont-based trio Nightingale have had to wait a long time for Three, the band's third CD. It has been eight years since the last recording (Sometimes When the Moon is High; the first CD was entitled The Coming Dawn). Three is worth the wait. Bottom line, here's what you should know about this CD: it is a musical feast, full of thoughtfully crafted medleys, excellently played. Becky Tracy's fiddling is strong and expressive, whether she's singing out a melody, weaving in a harmony or providing a rhythmic riff. In Jeremiah McLane's inspired accordion and piano playing, you can hear evidence of his study of styles such as Quebecois and French music, as well as his masters degree in Contemporary Improvisation. Keith Murphy not only plays superbly on mandolin, guitar, piano, and on his feet (providing foot percussion); he also has a fine singing voice.

Are you happy?" inquires the tall imposing figure of Bassekou Kouyate at a concert earlier this year at the Getty. As if insecure about the effects of his music which should evoke this sense of elation, he repeats this question at the end of every other song. And as the set progresses, you decide, yes, I am happy, regardless of the language barrier and the actual content of each song. The layperson can appreciate the technique and the rolling wave of sound, not to mention the energy radiated by each of the musicians who go from stoic self-conscious performance to playful dancing and contagious smiles. Hints of 60s-era jamming weave in and out of the melodies which retain the griot spiritual sensibility. This is not uncommon in much of Malian music, and especially that of the stringed instrument variety.

At any given acoustic jam that might include musicians of old time, Celtic, Appalachian, or any other form that serves up songs of a traditional disposition, you might hear a certain similarity between old ballads, folk blues, lullabies, and church music. There might be a twist in the lyrics that bends an old Irish lament into something akin to an American blues tune or a harmonica melody might remind you of some doleful dirge from a concertina heard in a nameless pub you fell into one night.

Songs from the Atlantic Fringe, a collaborative effort from three musicians, collectively known as The Unwanted, calls attention to this common ground where music has infiltrated one continent and then returned, altered here and there, often colored with regional lyrics or instrumentation.Â

When Pete Seeger was charged with Contempt of Congress for not answering House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)'s questions on August 18, 1955, he began a long sojourn as an underground artist, after having headed the most successful pop folk quartet in music history just five years before. That would be The Weavers, which crashed and burned less than one year after soaring to the top of the hit parade in 1950, with their two-sided hit record of Tzena Tzena Tzena and Goodnight Irene. They were blacklisted before the year was out, and had two years worth of bookings cancelled on them overnight.

Los Angeles was the home of the invention of country rock in the late 1960s, and for almost a decade this genre flourished and made millions of dollars for the major record companies. The Eagles were probably the most famous of the groups that played country rock, although only their first record and portions of the next few really mined this genre.

The original release of Silver Meteor (on Sierra as well) was back in 1980. It served not only as a great overview of LA country rock music including some now almost forgotten artists, but it also featured the four songs that the late Clarence White recorded for his first solo album. Sadly, this project was not completed since a few weeks after these recordings were done, White was killed by a drunk driver while loading his equipment following a gig in Palmdale.

Having just ended a year that saw Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebrated by rock and folk royalty at the Madison Square Garden, after being awarded his first competitive Grammy for the album Pete Seeger: At 89, it is chastening to be reminded what all the fuss was about with this brand new release of an extraordinary concert that Pete gave 45 years ago on February 20, 1965-recorded live but only now released for the first time.

If you think you have heard the best of Pete Seeger with his Grammy-winning album, or even with the moving and memorable performance at Obama's Inaugural Concert last January 20, think again.

Tom Corbett's new CD, Tonight I Ride, is the kind of fun, quality album that those who have worked with him in the Southern California music scene for many years always knew he was capable of putting together. This is Tom's third solo release and -- with no disrespect meant to his first two efforts -- it is his best album so far.

Tom's mandolin, guitar and harmony vocals have graced the recordings and performances of a numerous assortment of Southern California's folk and bluegrass community. He has been one of the most versatile acoustic artists on the West Coast Americana scene for a number of years now, including a regular stint with John McEuen's String Wizards.

Inspired is a CD of elegant Scottish music by David Brewer, the piper and whistle player in the Celtic band Molly's Revenge, and Rebecca Lomnicky, a young fiddler from Oregon. "Elegant" or perhaps "stately" seem to be the best words to capture the atmosphere, in particular the fiddle style. It is slower and more refined than old-time or Irish fiddling, but it is not classical music either. If you are not familiar with this genre, this CD is a good introduction. If you are already a fan Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, Inspired will be an enjoyable addition to your CD collection.

Evie Ladin, step dancer, banjo player and singer in the Stairwell Sisters has just released her first collection of songs, Float Downstream. From the opening track, I Love My Honey, with its stripped down banjo, rhythm and voice, she shows you where she's from-- "a girl who ran barefoot through muddy festivals, soaking up traditional American music and dance." Although this tune (from fiddler Santford Kelly) and the album have those late night acoustic elements of fire and firewater, its overall sound has a more global, contemporary singer-songwriter blend.

It's hard not to like Pokey La Farge and the South City Three. For want of a better term, Pokey and the boys play "good time music." If you're old enough to remember the Lovin' Spoonful or the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, then you have some idea of what type of music Pokey plays. Maybe you're a blues fan and know about the Memphis Jug Band. Maybe you're a folk fan and you like The New Lost City Ramblers. You know that Pokey does. But perhaps you don't like upbeat music. Perhaps you can't abide by humor in music, or even just plain silliness. Perhaps you have no fondness for straw hats and spats. If so, then read no more.

Pokey La Farge is a St. Louis based musician, all of twenty six years old.

The package is so gorgeous it grabs you right away. Big bold
southern colors and Latin looking iconography. gives you a warm feeling that
this might be a special recording. First off the sparkling harp of Celso Duarte
takes you right to Vera Cruz. But wait, there are the Chieftains - with Sonny's Mazurka. So Irish. Will this
work? Then Lila Downs hypnotic vocals take command, and the whole thing gels in
a most marvelous way, with the pipes, whistle, flute taking decidedly Latin
lines, and seemingly having a ball. Then back to the Mazurka in the end, and
you realize, this is going to be gooood.

It's been four years since cancer took Ali Farka Touré, but the gentleman farmer, Niger River bluesman, and former mayor of Niafunké has left us with one last sonic memento. Ali and Toumani finds the guitarist teaming up again with countryman and kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté (with whom Ali won a Grammy for In The Heart of the Moon) and a few special guests, including Ali's son Vieux and the late Cuban bassist Cachaito Lopez. (In a sad irony, these were the Buena Vista Social Club sideman's last recording sessions as well.) The album's 11 cuts, recorded over three days in June 2005 at a London studio, manage to be both spontaneous and contemplative, a timeless slice of pan-Malian musicology riven with a laidback acoustic intensity reminiscent of the best back-porch jam sessions (albeit a very well-recorded one).

Two things hit me from the first, listening to Natural Angle, Grada's latest release on Compass Records. First, this recording just sounds fantastic, and second, these great players have carved out a unique sound amidst the proliferation of fiddle/accordion/flute/guitar.female vocalist Irish bands now showcasing Irish music on the world's stages. Grada's music is rooted and strong, with a sense of humor and it is quite emotionally powerful without losing an truly engaging sense of spontaneity.

Abe's Axe, a set that links a trad tune with one of the band's own composition, leads with David Doocey's lovely focused flying fiddle, then Stephen Doherty comes in with breathy percussive effects on flute that work perfectly, all respect to Jethro Tull, before joining the fiddle in a duet that sounds both traditional and fresh, and, as in the best trad duets, more than the sum of two very good parts.

There's no folk like Quaker folk. On the cover of Carrie Newcomer's new CD, Before & After, she is illustrated in warm sunset colors on a train. The window shows a scene outside; a golden sun and several birds in flight. And there is Carrie, busy writing on a pad of paper with book in hand, her feet relaxed on the seat across from her. It is a serene portrait of an artist at work with her inspirations around her.

And what is inside the album demonstrates a quality equal to the cover art. An artist at work in her element, deepening her art, fine tuning her observations of the ordinary and always with her hand on the pulse of the spiritual cravings of the human soul.

Sylvia Herold is probably the best folksinger you've never heard of. This dynamic and sophisticated vocalist, from the East Bay area of San Francisco, is leader of the folk ensemble known as Euphonia. The group also features mandolinist Paul Kotapish, box player Charlie Hancock, and double bassist Chuck Ervin, and guests. Their material ranges from acoustic swing to traditional Celtic, and anything goes in between, but it's all pretty.

Euphonia's latest release is The Old Jawbone, which as far as I can tell is their second offering, although Sylvia has other recordings on her website.

In the category of children's music, dozens of musicians have made their entire careers writing and performing music exclusively for tykes and pre-teens. A handful of acoustic musicians who usually write sensitive adult songs will occasionally make the foray into a children's album as their own offspring or those near to them can often be the catalysts for creating kid choruses. Some well-known performers have crossed-over for a stab at creating a songbook of tunes palatable to the little ones. Leadbelly, Johnny Cash, and David Grisman are just a few that come to mind. And a few years ago, even the alt-country guys and gals took some time away from songs of dark love, dark roads, the dark before light, and whiskey, and contributed some bouncy rhymes to The Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides.

Shout Monah is the first album by The Haints Old Time String Band. Featuring Erynn Marshall on fiddle, Jason Romero on banjo and vocals, and Pharis Romero on guitar and vocals, the Haints are anchored near Victoria, BC, where Erynn (now of Galax, Virginia) hails from, and where Jason and Pharis now live. The Haints channel the energy and often-overlooked versatility of old-time Southern music. Yes, this CD is squarely in the old-time tradition -- no experimental blending with other genres or taking off in new directions here. But, no, these songs and tunes don't all fit into a single mold or follow the same groove. The Haints explore the many twisty by-roads of Southern mountain music, pulling together an album that is novel and enticing, all the while hewing close to traditional roots.

If you enjoy Scottish bagpipe music and wanted to get a CD featuring this amazing instrument, the CD Turning Pages by David Brewer is a good place to start. David is the piper and whistle player of Molly's Revenge and the Scottish Highland pipes is his main instrument. The CD contains a mix of traditional pipe tunes, airs, marches, jigs, and reels.

The Scottish bagpipe is a somewhat odd instrument and there is not a huge amount of recorded music that has broad appeal because recordings tend to fall into two narrow camps. The better known camp is marching bands featuring pipes and drums, the minority camp is a solo style that can appear rather monotonous. Very rarely bands like Molly's Revenge or the Battlefield Band integrate Scottish bagpipes with other instruments, but the pipes are secondary on their recordings.

Beth Wood is an artist you should know about. A powerful singer/songwriter of new contemporary folk music, her newest project, her eighth independent release Beachcomber's Daughter, is a gorgeous musical joy ride, vividly and movingly brought to life via a confident and kick-ass country rock and roll, at the same time tender, poetic and painful, with a wicked and wonderful humor to top everything off.

Beth has achieved an impressive array of awards for her work, from winning the Kerrville New Folk Contest in 2005, the 2006 Sisters Folk Festival Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest, the 2004 Wildflower Festival Songwriters Contest, and was a finalist in the 2007 Telluride Troubadour Contest among others, along with a big list of festival appearances and college touring. It's a resume that makes you want to sit up and listen.

There are voices that have followed us through our lives. We've heard them on our car radios as we've raced through the decades of our childhood. They have played like a soundtrack for our lives through the beaches, valleys, deserts and prarie roads we've traveled on our way to our present. Johnny Rivers carries such a voice. So much so, when he sings, we sit up and listen. We take notice because of our common history. When he first emerged in the mid-sixties at his now legendary engagements and live recordings at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, he created a tour de force that helped to break down the wall between pop and folk music. With recordings like Where Have All The Flowers Gone, Midnight Special and Memphis he did what it took The Byrds five people to do; bring folk-rock to the musical stages of L.A. in the mid-sixties.

Boulder Acoustic Society has been called a mini-orchestra rather than your basic rock and roll band. They are a lively musical caravan made up of four Colorado-based musicians who burn up stages across the country to many a sold-out venue. The varied backgrounds of BAS allow them to give a kaleidoscopic performance that is impressive, but without any hint of pretension. With Punchline, they transfer some of variety to a digital package. The ambitious nature of the packaging of the CD, although no enhancement to the music nor insightful to the songs (no lyric listings), adds a dimension (literally 3D!) of the band as both poseur and provocateur. It will stand out musically, as well as literally, on your CD storage shelf.

I recently became acquainted with the Appalachian folk music duo of Jeni Hankins and Billy Kemp (they bill themselves as "Jeni & Billy") when I met and played alongside them at the FAR-West (Folk Alliance Regional) Music Conference in Irvine in early November. We shared a discussion panel on Appalachian music, and later we shared songs in a roundtable showcase room. It was, by virtue of the close confines of the room, a wonderfully intimate experience of their work, but also intimate by virtue of their art, their writing and performance style, and their honest, loving, warm and authentic presence.

"If you remember the 60s you weren't there," insisted Wavy Gravy, one of its iconic counter-cultural heroes, but as Johnny Cash replied in his early gospel masterpiece, "I was there when it happened, so I guess I ought to know"-the "it" in this case being the folk revival. And all of us who were there know, what was the most reliable source for accurate information about that on-going odyssey through America's bedrock music. That would be The Little Sandy Review, which was edited and published by Paul Nelson and Jon Pankake, in the same state from which came the folk revival's most astonishing artist. That would be Minnesota, home to both Bob Dylan and Jon Pankake-and thereby hangs a tale.

Pankake was generous with the artists he championed from the pages of his and Nelson's journal-often to a fault. When the young, still-unformed, busking would-be troubadour had no place to stay, Jon put him up on his couch.

An up-and-coming phenom in mid-1960s Los Angeles, he was poised to hit it big; everyone who heard him was blown away. Listening to these two recordings, it's easy to see why. But it never happened. His story is sometimes compared to that of the Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash, which was made into the movie A Beautiful Mind a few years ago. Like Nash, Steve Mann's mental illness became the dominant force in his later life, overshadowing his earlier promise.

Happily though, we do have these two recordings. Most of these cuts are from the 1960s when Steve was at his peak and still performing in concert. There is also one cut on Alive And Pickin' that was recorded in 2004.

Alive and Pickin' is a compilation of cuts from a number of sources. It starts off with a live set (recorded by his old friend Stefan Grossman) that offers a fine sense of Steve's range and power. Starting with a fine Jelly Roll, it moves to Mose Allison's If You Live, a jazz tune - indeed, Steve always said he did a lot of jazz. For example, his Amazing Gospel Tune, also in this set, is pure Ray Charles.

Banjo player Fred Sokolow brought a blues guitarist friend to the Ash Grove one night in 1967 to see Steve Mann. As Steve launched into a Blind Lemon Jefferson tune, 99 Years Blues, Fred noticed his friend unbutton the top button of his shirt. By the time Steve finished the song, 2 and ½ minutes later, Fred's friend had pulled out a handkerchief and started to daub some beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead.

Steve then turned his attention to a Ray Charles classic Drown In My Own Tears, and miraculously recreated on six strings Charles' 88 keys piano accompaniment, complete with his jazz chords. Fred's guitarist friend's underarms were starting to pour sweat all over his new cotton twill shirt, leaving massive stains that were starting to overwhelm his neat tie in the middle.

Double Play is the second album from Liz Carroll and John Doyle as duo. Following their first duo effort, In Play (2005), Double Play is work of outstanding musicianship, arguably the best traditional Celtic CD of the year.

Liz Carroll occupies an interesting position among contemporary Irish fiddlers. Unlike, Kevin Burke or Martin Hayes, most of the tunes she plays, on this CD and others, are generally not traditional tunes from the public domain, but rather her own compositions. She's a prolific tunemaster.

Before you put this CD in your playback machine take a look at the small package this good thing comes in. Every touch has meaning, and was attended to with more than a modicum of thought. The front cover has what looks like-though it may only be simulated-a 19th century Currier and Ives print of a couple riding a sleigh being pulled by a team of energetic horses, charging out of the circular frame in which there is a lovely winter scene with a snowy landscape. It looks like they are heading out of this bygone world into your postmodern living room. The typeface for the title-Christmas In the Heart-is also studiously old-fashioned, derived from many a 19th or early 20th century theatre poster.

2009 Kerrville New Folk Winner Ernest Troost's newest album, the aptly titled Resurrection Blues is a brilliant new piece of songwriting art. Its thirteen Piedmont-blues influenced songs tell stories of passion, lost love and regret-filled lives at a cross-roads, looking for a modern-day answer to "how did things ever get this far?" and "when did the darkness fall?" Ernest Troost's existential questions run rampant in his first three songs; and then, the stories begin.

Haberdashery is a new group from Los Angeles and just released their first CD. And what a fine first project it is! Haberdashery is hard to classify stylistically, but if you like Astor Piazolla, you'll enjoy them. Maybe it could be described as a mixture of Tango, Jazz, Folk, Gypsy, and French music, but that is not too helpful either. You just have to hear it and you can get samples on their website.

The musicianship is very impressive, the technique of classically trained musicians with the energy and drive of folk music and the improvisational skill of jazz. They are a classy band (not to mention a very well dressed band).

Maria Muldaur has had a somewhat schizophrenic career. Her early work was totally roots oriented, working with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, singing, playing fiddle and serving as a sort of folk music sex symbol. But by far her biggest success was as a pop jazz chanteuse warbling Midnight at the Oasis. To some, she's the iconic hippy chick with the long thick hair, dancing to Bob Dylan at Newport. To others, she is an almost Mae West-ian entertainer, as known for her repartee and cleavage as her song selection. Midnight has become, like it or not, a standard, at least judging by Wal-Mart and recent elevator investigation.

The combination of British guitarist/producer Justin Adams and Gambian spike fiddle (ritti) master, Juldeh Camara, produces a sound that either completes the circle of Africa-to-America and-back-again musical history or, at the very least, takes a part of the arc and intersects it with a new kind of Afro-blues genre.

On their newest recording, Tell No Lies, the obvious riffs from classic blues tunes weave in and out of many of the songs. Echoes of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker and Slim Harpo resonate throughout, but Camara's Fulani vocals (a nomadic people of Gambia and other countries across West Africa) and ritti sawing cut deeply through Adams' thick guitar lead lines.

We last left Peter Joseph Burtt with Sunken Forest. It was a treasure trove of African influenced blues, folk and pop. The interim years have not found Burtt resting on his laurels, and so we come to Hand To Mouth.

As with Sunken Forest, Burtt called upon his friend Corey Harris to produce. Harris provides guitar and vocals. Chris Cox is on keyboards, and Ben Isaacs does percussion. Burtt plays kora, guitar, mbir, vocals and wrote six of the nine songs on the project.

Expectations are high around here when Ronny Cox releases a new album. And fair disclosure is due: this reviewer named him among FolkWorks' "Top Ten / Best of 2008" male singer-songwriters in L.A., two years after he earned "Listener Favorite" status on radio's "Tied to the Tracks" for his original song, Sanctuary, about a newborn wild horse. And even before this review and another due this month in Dirty Linen magazine, Songs... with Repercussions was the number one album on the "Folk DJ" play list for the month of June, and Happy Father's Day, a track on the album, was the number 4 song of the month.

Love of the Land is the first solo CD by Christa Burch, a Southern Californian who has contributed her many musical talents to a variety of West Coast music projects, playing bodhran with the Syncopaths and Blackwaterside, singing as one-half of the a capella group Lintie. Love of the Land is a vocal CD, a collection of Celtic songs, some traditional pieces, mostly from Scotland and Ireland, but also some new compositions in the Celtic tradition. The CD is produced by Dennis Cahill, best known for his haunting, sparse guitar-playing with Irish fiddler Martin Hayes. Fans of the Hayes-Cahill recordings will find some of the same sweet, evocative and exploratory playing here.

The Turning of Clocks is an album of original and traditional flat picked blues by Shaun Cromwell. Although released in 2007, the impetus for reviewing the album here stems from his solo performance at the Fourth Ever Los Angeles Old Time Social in May of this year. The reality, and I'm not being trite, his performance knocked everybody's socks off--an audience largely full of discerning American roots musicians. As stated on his Myspace page, it was recorded with one microphone, a couple of beat-up guitars and many short sessions over a period of several months, is his first release and is a meditation on death and impermanence.

The Life and Times of Richard Thompson: A Feast For The Eyes, Ears and Soul

BY TERRY ROLAND

If a Nobel Prize could be given for the best box set anthology in release, The Life and Music of Richard Thompson would win hands down. How's that for fan-like hyperbole? Spreading out over five CDs, it covers the years from 1971 to 2006 where Richard is still a dynamic and innovative force in popular music today. One of the clear highlights of this box-set is the demonstration of how hard-to-categorize Richard has become over the years. Is he British folk, American rock or a Celtic balladeer? For those who have recently been introduced to or the veteran fans who date back to the salad days of Fairport Convention, this anthology will prove essential in that it not only yields a valuable and engaging look at the artist himself, but like the best releases of the last 50 years, it opens the doors and windows of the music and songs the singer-songwriter, like a modern Pied Piper, leads us to. While many of his peers have had pockets of phenomenal success, seasons of retirement or creative dry spells, Richard Thompson has moved steadily ahead, consistently exploring and deepening the art of his music, lyric and performance style. He is the uncommonly rare songwriter's working man showing up to the job everyday for the last 40 years and he has yet to disappoint.

The state of contemporary Bluegrass is in an interesting position: the genre has become a new melting pot, an amalgam of styles and sounds encompassing Old Time, Folk, Blues, Country, Jazz, Pop and, of course (hopefully!) Bluegrass - the original sounds of Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys. Why this is interesting is because Bluegrass at its creation was a monumental evolution of gathered sounds, from Tin Pan Alley, Blues, Black Gospel, Appalachian ballads, Irish dance music, set to a blindingly fast pace, with high lead vocals and group harmonies tighter than a drum. So now, it's gratifying to watch it growing again and changing with this new generation, called "a Bluegrass youth revolution" by some, all the while reaching back to grab, with love and reverence, the old sounds of driving Bluegrass, George Jones-type country music, Western Swing and mountain fiddle, melding with pop-flavored contemporary sounds.

The last time I saw Dr. Guy Logsdon, former Head Librarian at the University of Tulsa, he was singing dirty cowboy songs. I don't mean dirty as in dusty, or straight off the trail, I mean dirty as in unprintable in a family magazine, daily newspaper, or any media outlet controlled by the FCC. His classic book, "The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing" and Other Songs Cowboys Sing, was the result of a lifetime fascination with the songs that John Lomax missed when he pioneered the field. Lomax's late Victorian sensibility had some blind spots when it came to appreciating the less cultivated aspects of the folk.

There are a dozen collections of cowboy songs wherein you will find The Strawberry Roan, for example, but if you want to learn The Castration of the Strawberry Roan you will need to find Logsdon's book.

You probably know the back story on Guy Davis: parents are actors/writers Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis, little Guy was bounced on somebody famous' knee. He has produced and acted with success. He's recorded nine CDs for Red House. And his ninth is named after a Bob Dylan tune Davis has recorded once before. And what a cover it is.

It starts with that Dylan familiarity, the blend of the organ, drums and guitars. Is it from Blonde on Blonde? No, wait, that's a newer song, and wait again: that ain't Bob singing! It's a huskier, fuller voice, but the voice wraps around Bob's tale of small town bravado and longing with even more conviction than Bob mustered for his version.

Davis has never sounded better, even though this lively trip through Bob-land is not too much like what we've come to expect from Davis: acoustic blues played with feeling and gusto. If that's what brings you back to Davis' CDs, you will not be disappointed. There's plenty of 12 string, slide guitar and grit. He throws a nice curve by doing Can't Be Satisfied on banjo.

From the opening, Journey to Another Side, imaginatively set in a Mexican cantina, to the closing, Friends Around the Fire, singing under the moonlight with good friends, this is the album that we expected from the venerable down-home Van Nuys duo. It's imaginative, entertaining, melodic, beautiful and humorous; and it's a cover-to-cover sing-along, my favorite kind of musical entertainment.

Similar to their first collection, The Pearl and the Swine, the selections alternate between those written by Fur and those by Steve, except that this time two of Fur's were very effectively co-written by Ric Taylor. And it's also similar to the first CD, in that the ones about asphalt, dirt, engines and campfires are Steve's, while the pretty song department is well covered by Fur with If I Was Free (with Ric), My Blue Yodel and the gorgeous Summer's Gone Again.

Tuesday is the cruelest day. On Mondays, everyone at work is strung out, wondering how the weekend went by so fast. By Tuesday, we're supposed to be in the groove again. I'm not. Driving my 30-mile commute to work, I curse the impending layoffs announced on our e-mail network (who's next???). I surf the radio stations for relief but instead hear station after NPR station dissecting the disaster known as our economy. I ride the dial in search of a musical antidote to the recession blues -- from classical to jazz to norteño to reggae. Sometimes I'm lucky.

Last Tuesday I wasn't. The talk was more dismal than usual and the music ranged from bland to sheer noise. Then I remembered the CD I still had to review for FolkWorks. Something called La India Canela. I fed it in to the morose mouth of my Corolla's CD player and.... Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Wow! Go! Yeee! Ha! The cascading keys of an accordion nearly swept my Corolla and me off La Brea Avenue. My shoulders started rolling and my hips swaying to the fast-paced, driving rhythms of tamboro and guira. Suddenly I was smiling ear to ear and the mouth of my CD player seemed to be smiling with me. Merengue tipico had rescued me from my recession(and Tuesday) blues.

Buena Vista proves to be another excellent piece of work in a long line of successful efforts by this veteran team and their very fine groups. The eternal kids from the deep south, routed through Lake Wobegon, have done it again, producing a well-crafted and constructed collection of entertaining, easy-to-listen-to original music.

Their, count ‘em, 20th album, from the front to the back was enjoyably, pretty much what we've come to expect from R&L. The opening cut Going, Going, Gone gets you bouncing, smiling and happy to be listening. Then, just as you get comfortable paying attention to the musicianship, arrangements and quality engineering, the knockout song Maybelle's Guitar and Monroe's Mandolin gets you thinking about and appreciating the origins of a lot of great music that has come our way over the years.

The facts first: Foghorn Duo's Lonesome Song is an album of duets from Stephen "Sammy" Lind and Caleb Klauder of Foghorn Stringband. The songs are a first-class collection of traditional, classic country and original pieces of music drawn from the old time fiddle tunes, ballads and songs--the roots of American "roots" music. There's even a tune penned by Caleb and without looking at the cover, you'd never know. Foghorn Stringband may be in a transformative stage, but once you hear this album, you'll not doubt that these two fellas, at least, never stop playing. I mean never. And, Oh! Their voices! By far their two voices ringing together in song is so good I can think of none better today.

Initial disclaimer: This gentleman records for the same label that I do. However, I did not meet him until this release, nor was I familiar with his music. I stand to gain no financial improvement should his project prove profitable or not.

There is a wave (pun intended) of new "soft folk pop" artists who have surfing somewhere near their core. Though he resides in San Clemente, CA and has lived on a boat and lifeguarded for a living, John Sotter is not one of these surfing soft folk pop artists. His music has a strong flavor that resists comparison to other artists, but one might peg the production style of Alone to be Harvest- era Neil Young. It's all acoustic guitars, some occasional melodic electric bass, harmonica and unobtrusive drums. And it's all John Sotter. All the music, lyrics, instruments, the recording, production, mixing, mastering and even the artwork is all John Sotter.

"Here I go again..." begins Emmylou Harris on her luminous new album, a fitting beginning for this great artist's first new recording since 2003. Produced by Brian Ahearn, with the title taken from the lyrics of the Billy Joe Shaver song offered here, this listening experience is like coming home to an old friend you thought you'd lost: loving, gracious, soulful and full of gentle understanding.

No one who has ever heard Emmylou can ever forget her stunning sound. Whether in the middle of a rock and roll track, a country standard, or simply with lone guitar, she can command the listener with a pure emotional presence. You feel as though she is singing just to you, and all expressions are intimate.

Merlin Snider's first album Between came out in 1999 and to say the encore was a long time coming would be an understatement. Of course, to say it was well worth waiting for turns out to be belaboring the obvious. Right Here is captivating from the opening, picturesque, Central California love-song tour of Santa Cruz, to the thought-provoking hidden track No Advice at the baker's dozen point.

He has assembled an outstanding group of musicians, authored a tremendous collection of songs, engineered an ultimately pleasurable listening experience and produced an album that will be a "must-have" for connoisseurs of the singer-songwriter, folk genre.

Grammy-winning singer of such classics as 18 Wheels and A Dozen Roses, Where've You Been, Kathy Mattea says that her new album offered her a "re-education" in singing. Produced by Marty Stuart, COAL is an important work, in that Mattea brings the heartbreak and tragedy of the Appalachian coal-mining culture to the fore. And for some, especially die-hard Mattea fans, this will be an eye-opening journey into a land not heretofore travailed.

Mattea chose the perfect producer in Stuart, whose understanding of traditional country stems from his familial connection to the original Carter Family. He is also a commercial country star and now a producer, and he's put together this album with Mattea's strengths in mind -more contemporary songs are mixed in with the old, offering Mattea a chance to shine in her pop/folk blend while giving her a chance to stretch with older classics from the early part of the 20th century.

It's not easy being Randy Newman. You spend years as a singer-songwriter only to find you've ended up being banned in Boston and having an army of Short People on your tail. You have classic albums like Sail Away and Good Old Boys, but does the public remember? No. Then, you disappear into the world of movie soundtracks and songs that appear at the end of movies like Toy Story. So you have two uncles who are legendary in the movie soundtrack business, Lionel and Alfred, respectively. For 25 years you write beautifully glorious soundtracks to movies like Ragtime and The Natural. But does the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences award you the coveted Oscar? No. After 14 or 15 nominations, you finally get the measly naked bald headed statue for one of those songs that comes in during the credits at the end of some kid's movie. So why you should return to your roots, the singer songwriter alone on his piano with a ragtime orchestra behind you? Because, you're Randy Newman and I'm not!

If you've ever studied Scotland's poetry, music or theatre, the name Robert Burns will linger in your memory and consciousness as a bright flame of genius. In the liner notes to this wonderful recording of selections from the show Simply Burns, Robert Burns' poetry, prose and songs are presented as a fine project. "In January of 2008, four talented individuals came together to create an evening of song, poetry and readings in celebration of Scotland's best-loved bard, Robert Burns. Their aim was to offer an eclectic collection of material written by and inspired by Burns...designed both to entertain, and to simplify the man and his works for those who find it all a bit daunting." Simply Burns was intended originally for just a one-night show (at the Watermill bookshop in Aberfeldy, Scotland to be specific). However, after that spectacular night in the packed bookshop, they were surprised to find the show being requested through the countryside.

On any night of the week, you can find a club where couples are dancing salsa with frenetic energy. But when was the last time you saw a couple performing salsa's honored ancestor, the rumba? The dance involves overtly flirtatious interplay between a man and a woman, the woman alternately enticing and protecting herself as the man tries to catch her off-guard with a vacunao -- tagging her with the flip of a handkerchief or by throwing his arm, leg or pelvis in her direction in an act of symbolic sexual contact. It makes salsa look like a minuet.

If you're a lover of Cajun music and especially of one of the two instruments synonymous with the genre, then get your hands on From Now On, close the doors, sit back and listen to a truly comprehensive exploration of the renowned fiddler and his music. Yes, it's Michael Doucet recorded live in the studio, stripped down, for the most part, to just the man and his fiddle and yes, he even picks up that other musical symbol of the bayou, the diatonic accordion. Throw in another seasoned fiddler and a crack guitarist and this live unrehearsed recording comes alive. Doucet often compares Cajun music to the piquant dishes of the culture and like the ubiquitous gumbo, there is truly a different rendition recipe for many a tune.

Don't believe it when someone tells you "If you remember the 1960s you weren't there." I was there and I remember. I remember vividly. I don't remember the 1970s very well and I put all the effort I can muster into forgetting the 1980s. But I remember the 1960s and what I remember was the music. Those were the days before music became a corporate commodity. Of course there was formula pop music, but even the big labels were signing and recording bands that were playing music that sounded like nothing you ever heard before. The new FM radio stations became the way to hear that music. There was folk, there was rock, there was jazz, there was folk-rock, there was jazz-rock, there were sitars and bouzoukis, ragtime and jug bands - sometimes all on the same LP (for you youngsters, that's an antique vinyl platter with grooves that vibrated a needle to make sounds).

The Pine Leaf Boys latest CD Blues de Musicien is the real thing. This is old style, high energy Cajun music at its finest. The collection of songs ranges from original compositions by the various band members to classics of the Cajun and Zydeco tradition.

The band members have a significant history as well. Band member Wilson Savoy, accordion, fiddle, piano, singer and songwriter, is the son of Marc and Anne Savoy -- two-thirds of the Savoy Doucet Cajun Band. Marc is a well-known accordion maker in Eunice, Louisiana, and was one-third of the trio (along with Dewey Balfa and D.L. Menard) that recorded En Bas d'un Ch

What a terrific album, and how appropriate that it comes to us this way. Forty-odd years ago it was Rosalie Sorrels whose singing brought Bruce "Utah" Phillips to the attention of so many people, so it's somehow fitting that Sorrels has now recorded this heartfelt and beautiful tribute to the songs of her old pal. Phillip's recent death makes it a bittersweet occasion, and surely Sorrels didn't plan for the release to be timed in quite this way. But like the hobo who finds out where the train is going only after hopping on, when you're already aboard and rolling you might as well enjoy the ride.

Driving up Angeles Crest Highway en route to the Haramoknga American Cultural Center, I popped Louie Gonnie's Songs of the Sacred Circle: Harmony in Eight Parts into my CD player. It seemed fitting to listen for the first time to his collection of peyote songs just before attending a performance of Native American flute players, part of the World Festival of Sacred Music. The fast-paced of shaking of a high-pitched gourd rattle opened the first song, Dreamscapes. I gazed dreamily at the craggy San Gabriel Mountains and blue sky while Louie Gonnie sang in his native Dine language, his heartfelt voice moving up and down within a small range of intervals. As I rounded the bends of the mounting highway, the music harmonized with the natural landscape.

Lissa Schneckenburger is probably best known as one of the finest New England contradance fiddlers in the country. If you should happen to have the opportunity to dance to her playing you are in for a treat.

Her lively fiddling has a magically unique way of energizing the dancers and driving the dance.

Having said that ... this album is named Song; it isn't named Fiddling. That's because the focus here is on Lissa singing old and traditional songs from Maine where she grew up. Now, the instrumental work, by Lissa and others, is very well done, tastefully and inventively modern, quite listenable stuff. But the playing serves mostly to support the lyrics, not to stand on its own.

Any old-timey country album that starts out with chords that echo The Who's Talkin' Bout MyGeneration signals to me that here's a band that's talkin about mine and with that opening track Wild Old Nory from Kansas City quartet The Wilders'Someone's Got to Pay I sat up straight and pushed my hat back. The twin fiddles of the second tune Broken Down Gambler had me scratching my head, "What's this fiddle tune?" Why it's from the Skillet Lickers, and the twin fiddles of Betse Ellis and Dirk Powell certainly grab that feeling and even reminded me a little of the Red Hots complete with the "yeah" that just had to be hollered right at the end.

From its opening seconds of energetic fiddling, For Love and Laughter uplifts the spirit and re-enforces the reputation of Solas as a pre-eminent Irish-American band. Starting with three rousing reels in succession, the album attests to the superb musicianship of Seamus Egan (flute, tenor banjo, mandolin, whistle, guitar and bodhran), Winifred Horan (fiddle), Mick McAuley (accordion and concertina) and Eamon McElholm (guitar and keyboards). Their first album in four years, the 12-year old ensemble has enriched several numbers with instrumentals and backup vocals by the Canadian group The Duhks, who include Sarah Dugas, Tania Elizabeth, Jordan McConnell, Leonard Podolak as well as Scott Senior, Natalie Haas, Chico Huff, John Anthony and Dirk Powell.

To the dilettante, bluegrass is just one flavor of country. The truth is far more intertwined, though in today's radio market bluegrass is considered too country for country. Apparently no one told Ralph Stanley II about this, so he's just released a great country/bluegrass recording.

Ralph Stanley IIis the son of Ralph Stanley, the reigning patriarch of bluegrass. He's travelled and performed with his father and his father's band The Clinch Mountain Boys since he was old enough to stand, and has served as the lead singer of the group since the age of 16, filling the shoes of former leads Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Larry Sparks and of course Carter Stanley.

With the name, Molly's Revenge you might be fooled into lumping this band in with the likes of Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys - dishing out aggressive bar anthems and such- and you would be far from accurate. The revenge to which they refer in their cryptic name is what I tend to think of as "traddiction", or an inability to be temperate with one's desire to play Just One More Set of Tunes Before Going Home. Stu Mason (guitar, vocals, mandola) lays this out in poetic and graphic form on their website, www.mollysrevenge.com so go have a peek , if you wish...but I digress...this band plays traditional Irish and Scottish tunes along with recently composed numbers that fit well into the traditions in question. With their most recent CD The Western Shore they reveal how much they have matured as a group, and the injection of Moira Smiley on vocals is just what they needed.

Maybe there are two ways of getting to the essence of the blues. You could be born along the Mississippi, under a bad sign, and wind up standing at those crossroads with your guitar named Lucille. Then again, you could have dedicated your life to studying the music and playing with the musicians who generated the groundwork of the genre and thereby got under the skin of the subject. Well, Bernie Pearl isn't a denizen of the delta and as far as we know he didn't sell his soul to the devil to get him farther up the road. What he did do was commune with the blues and with many a bluesman to get to the heart of what it is and all about. True, the blues come from the African American experience, the diaspora of people who lived a life under duress and then developed a sound and lyric that reflected not only the hardship of the day, but also the comedy and error of love, work, and faith. However, communing with another's art form is also part of the American experience. And it's been said many times that the blues is a state of mind. If that's true then Bernie Pearl has had the blues on his mind and in his fret-full fingers.

Soul Science is what happens when you mix a British electric blues guitar dude, best known for pop/rock work with Robert Plant's post-Led Zep solo band, with a Gambian rifti (one-string fiddle) hotshot who's a griot from Africa but clearly conversant with mainstream Western tunes. Unobtrusive bass and percussion fills in the picture. The vibe is African, yet the supporting undercurrent is easily accessible Western-familiar pop blues. Nice stuff, well worth a listen.

I suppose you'd call this "fusion music." Fusion music is seen as a separate category, but really, it's not. In fact, it's all there is, anywhere. Face it, all the best musicians listen to anything they can wrap their little ears around, and always have. Somebody hears something good, goes all like wow that's cool, and suddenly they incorporate those licks and sounds into whatever they do.

I'm driving down Route 66 with my 14 year-old twin daughters in tow. I insert this new CD into the player. I ask the girls, "How do you like this?" They roll their eyes and say, "Very retro, Dad!" I wonder...is retro an accumulation of music that has caught with us? This one sounds to me like what a Zen monk once called, "beginner's mind." I pray..."Lord, let me not take myself too seriously and help me to make less sense more of the time."

Xuefei Yang is a classical guitarist with a twist. Yes, she has a clear affinity for the Spanish classical repertoire, and this album includes well-executed performances of works by Isaac Albeniz, Francisco Tarega, and Enrique Granados. Very pleasant stuff, this.

But then there's that twist, and that's where things get interesting.

About a third of the selections here are solo classical guitar arrangements of music of her native China. Xuefei Yang is originally from Beijing, and moved to Britain to study only after rising to the highest levels of Chinese classical guitar circles. Her hybrid musical training gives her the properly solid background for the re-envisioning of the Chinese repertoire she does here and on her other recordings.

This is very nice stuff. Jim Stubblefield plays sizzling flamenco-infused guitar, with extra helpings of steam. Who knew that this level of intense, sexy energy could come from a nylon string acoustic guitar? But Stubblefield can play him some fine tunes, hey.

I have to confess, I didn't expect to like this as much as I do. The slickly packaged CD shows a hunky young blond rock & roll surfer-looking dude, and has a credit line for his makeup artist.

Makeup?? And it was recorded in Castaic. Castaic??

Well, looks can be deceiving, and as it turns out Jim Stubblefield really does have a thing or two to offer here. Yes, Guitarra Exotica's take on flamenco definitely has a rocker's sensibility, but living in LA, and exposed to all the great sounds available in this musical melting pot ... how could it not?

This second effort by the urban cowgirl from Carpenteria shows the maturity that comes with dedication, hard work and much more than a little talent. Jackie's first commercially available offering, Where the Legends Grow Like Weeds was well received and had a few jewels like the tribute to her mother, Louise, the engaging story of The Gold Country's Turning to Wine and the beautiful songs Moth to a Flame and Right as Rain.

Money to Burn offers its own variety of stories, tributes and enchanting melodies. The humorous and upbeat departments are well represented by Everybody Needs Some Salsa, the wry Real Short Leash and the crowd-pleaser Solitary Socks, while her father is remembered this time around in The Writing on the Wall. However, the real attractions for lovers of beautiful music are Some Things Time Can't Erase and the gorgeous Lady in Waiting.

The intent of a recording project is usually established well before the first note is recorded. Even if all the songs haven't been composed or all arrangements finalized, there is a reason for the artist to begin. But sometimes that intent, or the result, can be changed by activities well beyond the artist's control. Thus begins Holy Roads.

Tim Dismang is a San Juan Capistrano, California based singer songwriter. Tim's work has been very influenced by one of his idols, John Stewart. So much so that Dismang includes four of Stewart's songs on Holy Roads. So much so that Dismang uses Bob Hoke on drums and Dave Batti on bass. Both worked as Stewart's rhythm section. And Bob Hawkins, the gentleman who plays remarkable guitar on Holy Roads, ended up connecting with Stewart through Hoke and Batti due to his work with Dismang and was recording and gigging with Stewart prior to John's untimely death in January of this year.

Hot on the heels of the Gram Parsons & The Flying Burrito Brothers Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 release last autumn comes this import re-release of Last of the Red Hot Burritos, featuring a remarkably different Flying Burrito Brothers. These tunes were recorded live at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1972.

The Flying Burrito Brothers band on Gram Parsons & The Flying Burrito Brothers Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969 consisted of lead vocalist/writer Gram Parsons; Chris Hillman vocalist, writer and guitarist; Chris Ethridge writer and bass player; Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel guitar and Mike Clarke on drums. By 1972, FBB personnel had been altered remarkably, and the direction of the band had altered as well.

On her new CD Beautiful World, Eliza Gilkyson lets go with her jitters and assurances on our times and the times to come. Her first new studio recording in 3 years, she still writes a line that cracks like a whip with rhythm and meaning delivered with catchy music and an expressive voice that's a pleasure to have in the ear. These are songs you can't get out of your head, and you're glad they've nested there.

Susie Glaze is relatively new to the Southern California bluegrass scene, but her rise to the ranks of nationally known talent has been fairly well documented here in the pages of FolkWorks. Glaze was raised in Tennessee, and first chose the artistic path of theater. After some success in the New York stage scene, she discovered a love for bluegrass music and moved to California. First she became a member of The Eight Hand String Band, and then began her solo career. Green Kentucky Blues is her fourth solo project, and most likely the one that folks will look back to as her "breakout" recording. Don't be surprised if Green Kentucky Blues finds its way to a nomination at IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) music awards.

Tumbatú Cumbá is fronted by brother and sister Nicolas Falcof (guitar,vocals, percussion) and Magalí Falcof (vocals and percussion) and includes members Julian Solarz (piano, percussion and vocals), Cecilia Fraiman (vocals), Sebastian Dezeo (electric bass) and Bernardo Ucha (percussion). The group describes itself as "Buenos Aires musicians who fuse Latin American styles and rhythms from the wide-ranging folk traditions from every corner of the continent." In their 2007 eponymous recording, Tumbatú Cumbá gives a contemporary feel to traditional Afro-Latin rhythms and explores genres that have gone through many re-births as each Latin-American generation has searched for its musical roots.

The CD opens with Ê-emoriô, a song based on a traditional Afro-Brazilian chant, but attributed to Brazilian legends Gilberto Gil and João Donato who popularized it. With several guest percussionists and vocalists, the track is a call and response between the chorus and the rich vocals of Magalí Falcoff.

The thinking man's country ensemble, who seem to soar ever higher over the vast wilderness of hyphenated roots music bands, have released another recording, Hallowed Ground, and it admirably adds to the existing evidence that they deserve their previous acclaim.

Yes, there is some indication that they have some kind of preternatural flower power at their disposal. However, you could eschew the acid folk, biorhythm and blues, hippie-hop, and eco-country tags because the songs that they offer are still just under the good music umbrella, psychedelic-imbued or not.

The Rob Waller-Paul Lacques writing partnership excels at a variety of styles, covering the landscape with the eccentric to the epic. Yes, it's counter-country done with poetic flair but also digs in with relevancy and depth akin to short story collections. That they have become so good at writing and playing songs that cover such a wide variety of subject matter is now no surprise. Hallowed Ground is the fourth CD from the band and reaffirms the consistency of their efforts and expands the repertoire even more.

CALIFORNIA'S DESERT YIELDS A ROUGH-EDGED DIAMOND OF A SINGER-SONGWRITER

By Terry Roland

Singer-songwriter Dave Travis is an undiscovered gem. Working as an independent artist has provided him with artistic freedom, allowing him to develop both his style and lyrical content. His new release, 12-String Crazy, is a diverse collection of songs yielding a unique, fresh and original style of Americana music combining folk, country, blues, soul, gospel and rock. His influences are clear throughout this stream of songs, but his distinctive instrumental, vocal and writing style demonstrate an artist who has a strong sense of his own voice and vision.

Some hear the clarion call of the bagpipes and the ears perk up, the heart races, and the sonority reverberates through the core. Even if you don't have a molecule of Celtic DNA in your spittle, everyone has a reaction to the echoing exhalations of the unique bag, chanter and drone instrument. When combined with the sonorous beating of drums and the unique bellow of the didgeridoo, something primal and immediate hits the psyche. Whether it's your cup of tea or mug of grog, Wicked Tinkers provide an invitation to explore those internal rumblings, subtle or undiscovered though they may be.

With RANT, Wicked Tinkers offer up one of their most colorful recordings. And, although there is no substitute for a live performance, pushing the volume control throttle of your sound system when listening to this recording will provide a close rendering of the group, at least sonically.

JACKSON BROWNE SOLO ACOUSTIC VOL. 2 (released on March 4, 2008 on Inside Recordings) is the second in a series of solo acoustic albums by the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Famer. Though with new songs, the format is identical to the first volume, released in 2005. Vol. 2 showcases the same sense of intimacy and live energy at Jackson's recent solo acoustic concerts: he's singing to you.

The collection begins with a stripped-down version of Never Stop from his 2002 album, The Naked Ride Home, with Jackson on guitar. The acoustic arrangement emphasizes the words and it comes across as a beautiful love song. When Jackson sings “And when you make me smile, I'm the richest man I know,

The album is designed to honor that tradition while revealing it as an evolving genre of music. During the 1950s and 1960s, for example, some of the brass bands began incorporating rhythm and blues, jazz and funk into their sound. On Cut 5 of New Orleans Brass, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's infectiously rhythmic rendition of It's all Over Now, featuring Dr. John in fine form, demonstrates this trend with verve. Kermit Ruffins represents the 1980s generation take on the tradition with his Rebirth Brass Band with Treme Second Line (Blow Da Whistle).

The word He’eia refers to He’eia Bay on Hawai’i Island’s Kona coast, a place where King David Kalakaua used to enjoy on a day at the beach. In the opening musical selection of the same name, Cyril Pahinui evokes the setting with a powerful, lush interpretation of the name chant (meleinoa) for Kalakaua, with music attributed to J. Kalahiki. He’eia is one of three traditional songs for which he has created exquisite arrangements for slack key guitar.

One of the fascinating aspects of this third solo album is the way it showcases Cyril’s stylistic gifts. He plays an instrumental version of He’eia on Cut 1 with his 12-string guitar in the C Mauna Lua tuning (C-G-E-G-A-E). Later, in Cut 6, he plays it in Atta’s C Major (C-G-E-G-C-E), creating a different mood with the change in tonal coloration and adding his own vocals. Similarly he plays O Kamawailualani (the ancient name for the island of Kaui’i) on his six-string guitar in Cut 2 and uses his 12-string guitar for the same selection in Cut 10.

It’s hard to imagine in this hundreds-of-channels-at-the-touch-of-a-button age, but not so very long ago- during my lifetime, in fact, TV was home to very few programming choices, and any music, particularly good music, was rarely found. Variety shows like the Ed Sullivan Show would have the occasional pop act between the dancing elephants and such, and there were occasional shows dedicated to pop music, but vaudeville, rather than anything current, was the benchmark.

So it’s all the more impressive that it was not an ambitious musician of the rock generation, which was (arguably) at its boldest artistic point, but the most successful mainstream country artist of his time that most effectively bridged the gap between musicians of various genres in the late 1960s.

One of the activities I enjoy most at traditional music festivals and multi-day workshops is the opportunity to thoroughly browse the pre-recorded music offerings. Those stacks of compact discs and digital video discs seem even more accessible than their vinyl and magnetic tape ancestors, and, unlike vinyl “records,

Blues fans know Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan as Santa Barbara’s answer to Brownie and Sonny. This came natural for Ball, since he shares Sonny Terry’s birthday of October 24.

Ball and Sultan have been entertaining audiences all over the world since 1978. They are known for their casual yet musically tight shows. They’ve recorded eight duo CDs, and have a long running residency at the Cold Spring Tavern in the Santa Barbara hills. Sultan was recently honored with a signature Martin guitar.

For a very brief time in 1968 and 1969, Los Angeles was the home of an almost perfect amalgamation of rock and roll, country and soul music known as TheFlying Burrito Brothers. Their first recording, Gilded Palace of Sin, was a eclectic mix including recent soul hits redone in a country rock mode. Somehow TheFlying Burrito Brothers were able to take songs like Dark End of the Street or Do Right Woman with their own imaginative spin while still capturing some of the essence of the original interpretations. The Flying Burrito Brothers also brought a good number of originals to the project, and each was worthy of contrast with the soul tunes. In fact, it wasn’t hard to imagine William Bell or James Carr taking a crack at Hot Burrito #1 or Hot Burrito #2. Then TheFlying Burrito Brothers upped the ante, adding several Nuevo-country tunes that would have felt at home with George Jones, Buck Owens or more likely Waylon Jennings. Christine’s Tune, Sin City, Wheels: these were all steely country tunes but with hip, bent lyrics.

Do you ever long to get away? Sometimes, in the middle of the week, do you have an intense desire to walk in a meadow, see a shooting star, reflect on a glacial mountain, pluck an old guitar on an aged, wood front porch, or just scratch the grateful belly of an old dog? If you do, Bill Staines’ newest release, Old Dogs, provides a much-needed respite from the complexities of today’s world. He also gives a glimpse into the diversity of American experiences through which, he allows his audience to see the past in a way that informs our appreciation for the present.

The ukulele of Jake Shimabukuro continues to boldly go into musical territory where no uke has gone before. Shimabukuro largely left behind his traditional Hawaiian repertoire some years ago, but his exploration of the instrument’s expressive capacity remains enthralling for music lovers not attached to genres. Two fall releases, one linked to the signature dance form of Hawaii, the other reaching out to vintage pop, deserve attention.

In the EP recording My Life, the virtuoso offers beautiful, heartfelt arrangements of six of his favorite tunes. He treats the work of Sarah McLachlan, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and Cyndi Lauper with respect while integrating his unique interpretations.

Broadway- has released a lovely and varied CD showcasing her clean and sprightly style with the help of some other excellent musicians. Eminent guitarist John Doyle is the producer along with providing his signature syncopated guitar and bouzouki accompaniment and arrangements. Liz Carroll, Natalie Haas and Sharon Shannon join her as well on a few tracks on fiddle, cello and accordion, respectively, along with Chico Huff on bass, Billy McComiskey on accordion, and Ben Wittman on percussion.

Like many other fans of A Prairie Home Companion, I first heard Robin & Linda Williams on the radio program where they’ve been frequent guests for over 30 years. That’s what makes their newest CD “Radio Songs

Today's world is fast moving and noisy. Pop music often reflects this, so much so that it becomes difficult to find music that isn't fast moving and noisy without succumbing to "easy listening," "new age" or "light jazz."

Ray Bierl's music is not fast moving or noisy, nor is it "easy listening," "new age" or "light jazz." It's folk, at its best. More back porch music than Top 10 pop.

Though raised in San Diego, Bierl's music is best known in the Bay Area, his adopted home. Ray picked up the guitar in high school, and became enamored with folk music in the 1960s, becoming a regular on the coffee house scene. Bierl provided guitar backup for a variety of artists such as Rosalie Sorrels, Kate Wolf, and Malvina Reynolds. He also dabbled in bluegrass, and eventually took up the fiddle. He took his fiddle to work every day at his civil service job and practiced at breaks, lunch and after work. One hopes his co-workers received hazard duty pay, since the fiddle is an instrument that is difficult to master, and a painful experience for those that get to hear the progress.

Martin Simpson has long been one of my favorite guitarists. I love his sense of timing.The fluidity of his picking conjures for me cascades and swirling eddies that buoy up the melody. What wonderful control he has- and he’s not afraid to just let it ring, either.

He starts off with a few ballads that have made their way to America- Batchelor’s Hall and an instrumental version of Pretty Crowing Chicken on the banjo, (both of which were collected by folklorist/musician/photographer John Cohen in the 1960s,) and Lakes of Champlain, a version of the Irish Lakes of Coolfinn. They are enhanced by the gentle cello and concertina accompaniments by Barry Phillips and Alistair Anderson, respectively.

Sometimes we ignore our own backyard, musically speaking. We don’t truly respect the talent we have in our own community or we can’t grasp them as STARS. Peter Case is a case in point. (Not only a bad pun but also the kind of hackneyed redundancy that has made the print media what we are today.) Case has spent most of his career based in Southern California, and has long garnered the respect (and awe) of his fellow musicians. His work has been regaled by the critics, but for the most part “mainstream success” has eluded him. Case is a remarkably prolific artist, his work gifted with a rich, storytelling aspect that make comparisons with prose writers such as Raymond Carter or Cornell Woolrich every bit as appropriate as comparisons with great storytelling songwriters like Guy Clark or Sleepy John Estes.

Say you've got to move and you've misplaced your energy supplements? No problem.Pop on Oyaya! and crank up the volume.You'll soon be doing all the moving you need to do - and I mean "moving" from taking all your stuff from here to there as well as "moving" your body to the groove.

From the first staccato hits on the snare drum, introducing some deliciously dexterous acoustic guitar work, followed quickly by some smoking slides on electric bass, the sense that you are in for an energetic ride becomes clear.Though she is not a very big person, Kidjo has a huge voice and enough energy to get us all to dance -or move furniture!You get the sense that she really doesn't need a microphone to front a band replete with guitars, several percussionists, drums, keyboards, horns and a host of backup singers.

Singer-songwriters don't seem to have much of a problem
bearing their souls. It's difficult to think of any subject that hasn't slipped
from the pens of a confessional musician. But it's somewhat a different story
when it comes to spirituality. A lot
of listeners shy from recordings that mention spirituality. Many are afraid
that they'll be proselytized, and of course some material isn't really
spiritual as much as religious indoctrination. And,
oddly, many people are far more comfortable discussing their love life than
their spiritual life. Singer/songwriter/guitarist Danny Flowers is an exception.

The whimsical name of the group belies the fact that these musicians play hard, fast, and serious. There’s nothing fishy about them. In fact, there’s no slouching or mannered excesses, as Fishtank Ensemble comes armed, loaded and ready to serve you up a platter of intense nearly cosmic gypsy music. Their latest CD release, Samurai Over Serbia, samples the global plain that is the group’s playing field. Like the gypsies, it crosses borders, villages, continents, and time periods showcasing the varied instrumental prowess of each member and the extreme range of vocalist, Ursula Knudson who also can double up on violin, banjolele and the musical saw.

Following the oldest of musical traditions, Pint & Dale have gathered a number of great nautical-themed songs in their travels. Their latest CD The Set of the Sail features songs, both traditional and contemporary, they've collected in their travels to England.

Unlike some of the more traditional shanty bands, Pint & Dale dress up traditional songs with updated musical arrangements reminiscent of some of the better bands of the 1960s folk music revival but the sound is fresh and current. Felicia Dale plays the hurdy-gurdy, fiddle, whistles and bodhran. William Pint plays guitar and mandolin. Felicia Dale's hurdy-gurdy has a prominent role on this CD and it sounds like she has added a new dimension to her playing on that instrument giving it more of a leading role than on previous recordings.

Ka Hikina O Ka Hau represents a new exploration with
slack key guitar by one of the foremost contributors to the Hawaiian musical
renaissance that began in the 1970's. Keola Beamer applies traditional
slack-key tunings to both traditional and classical material, collaborating
with pianist-record producer George Winston and guitarist-arranger Daniel
O'Donoghue to create an album of delicate beauty. In most of the pieces, Beamer
plays all the guitars through the magic of overdubbing.

It seems that Raiatea has grown up. Not to say that her voice has changed - she still has the sweetest voice you can imagine. Raiatea's first CD was recorded in 2003 when she was 17 years old. While that may be the norm for pop bands, the Hawaiian traditional music scene is usually dominated by more seasoned musicians. This makes it even more remarkable that she has captured numerous prestigious awards from the start: receiving the Na Hoku awards for her debut (given by the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Artists) for both Most Promising Artist and Female Vocalist of the Year in 2003. Her second CD Sweet and Lovely released in 2004 again won her the Na Hoku Female Vocalist of the Year plus Favorite Entertainer of the Year in 2005 plus four other Na Hoku awards. When she was nominated for a Grammy for her second CD, the New York Times called the recording "poised and utterly elegant."

The soaring vocal stylings of Qawwali singers (Qawwals) transport listeners and performers to heights of ecstatic spiritual awareness. Like the similarly intended and better known Whirling Dervishes, the public ritual of Qawwali runs on love and desire for Divine Union. Unlike the trance dancing Dervishes, Qawwali sweats, bleeds, and screams.

Originally from Persia, Qawwali flourished with the Chisti order of Sufis on the Indian subcontinent. A group of musicians called a party features a chorus of 4 or 5 men, a lead singer, second singer, percussionists on tabla or dholak, with the singers usually playing harmoniums, which took over from the stringed sarangis of earlier times. Qawwalis usually begin slowly with harmonium and tabla improvisation, some introductory singing by the lead, and finally the whole party joins building momentum as they go.

There lies a musical posse scattered across the vast disparate and desperate basin and valleys of Los Angeles, men who strum along according to the book of who-cares-what's-on-the-pop-charts. From bluegrass to blues and from ballad to cowboy waltz, the varied art of the American troubadour gets a shot in the arm when a cadre of the Southland's best musicians get together and stay in one place long enough to record a sample of the Americana roots music rainbow. The Goin' South Band rounds up Rick Shea, Cody Bryant, Paul Lacques, Vic Koler, John Zeretzke, Fred Sokolow, and Rick Cunha, each taking time out from their solo and sidemen projects, and presents them as educators and purveyors of various forms of the traditional American musical songbook, not the bright lights of Broadway, but tunes that would perhaps be found down the road a piece and headed mostly southbound.

Jake Shimabukuro's latest release could be titled The Naked Ukulele. Except for a few bonus tracks, the Honolulu-born ukulele virtuoso has stripped away the instrumental backup used in his four previous releases to let us experience his artistic sensibility without distractions. The result is a recording of rare emotional intensity. It showcases not only his astounding technique but also his drive to explore musical genres. While the Hawaiian folk roots of the ukulele remain strong today, Jake's music pushes beyond them fearlessly.

A haunting rock-blues-inspired riff opens the tastefully embellished version of George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps.After
stating the melody, he creates a bridge of chord progressions and
builds with a hard-driving rhythm and huge dynamics that belie the
small size of his four-stringed instrument. Then he returns to the
melody for a tender conclusion. During a recent interview, Jake told me
that Harrison's widow expressed her appreciation of Jake's adaptation
in person when he performed it in concert. In fact, Harrison was a
great fan of the ukulele, collecting instruments and recordings for
much of his artistic life. For that reason, too, Jake feels a bond with
the late Beatle whom he never met.

Bob Webb's album, Full Circle: The Solo Banjo Sessions means a lot to those of us who have been waiting many years for a recording of just Bob and the banjo. In the late 1970s, Webb abandoned old time banjo tunes for maritime music and Los Angeles for British Columbia and later Maine where he still resides. So, to have him back with this amazing album of old time banjo tunes is truly welcome since he is one of the finest clawhammer players in the country. The more you listen to his playing, the more you will appreciate his talent and mastery of the instrument.

If you are familiar withKitty Lie Over, the masterful recording of Irish traditional music by Mick O’Brien and Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh, you may have a sense of the melodious pulse that Caoimhin brings to this music. His new CD where the one-eyed man is king contains a series of jewel-like expressions that combine his sensibilities in the field of Irish traditional music with his own explorations in composition, recording, and art.This is an all-Caoimhin production, and he plays fiddle, hardanger fiddle,whistles, piano and other percussion on this recording.

In Generation Hawaii Amy Hanaiali'i' shares the rich cultural heritage passed on from her grandmother's generation to her own. Beginning with the opening song, Napua, the influence of her recently-deceased grandmother, Jenny Napua Hanaiali'i Woodd, permeates the album as it has permeated Amy's life. Beside the liner notes for the song is a picture of a youthful woman with a fresh, engaging smile, and a floral garland crowning her dark hair? The English translation of Amy's Hawaiian lyrics captures the tenderness of the granddaughter-grandmother relationship:

Your petals are indeed delicate

Awakened by the rains of Hina

How I yearn to see you

My blossom that is in eternal rest.

As in the other songs to be found on Generation Hawaii, the melody and instrumental arrangement of Napua intertwine like the thick, fragrant, flowered vines to be found in Hawaii's forests, woven to highlight the strength and sweetness of Amy's voice.

Most consumers are not surprised to see one of those “explicit lyric” stickers on the latest rap or hip hop CD. It’s a little odd to see one on a roots-rock record, but it does bring up the fact that a lot of folk music recordings probably deserve a similar sticker. The people that thought up the idea of putting warning stickers on records need a sticker too, but that’s another story. Scott Miller & The Commonwealth’s lyrics won’t cause you to pass out, and it’s easy to forget about the sticker once you are immersed in the music of Citation, Miller’s newest recording.

Chris Whitley pushed the envelope of blues music as far as any performer. His death from lung cancer in November of 2005 at the age of 45 shocked and saddened the blues music world. He was a remarkably proficient artist, reeling from solo projects to inspired collaborations such as Dislocation Blues, where he teamed with noted Australian bluesman Jeff Lang.

Texas born Whitley released his first CD, Living with the Law, in 1991 and released 14 others by the time of his death. Some, like 1998s Dirt Floor, were primarily acoustic recordings, where others used samples, looping and distortion as part of the menu.

Most people know of the band Fleetwood Mac as a pop rock group, one of the most popular in the mid and late 1970s. There is another Fleetwood Mac that only shares two of the same members, but left a legacy arguably as strong as the later incarnation, although as an electric blues band with emerging pop overtones.

Fleetwood Mac began in 1967 as somewhat of an offshoot of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, as three of the original four members had been in the recent employ of Mr. Mayall. The former Bluesbreakers, bassist John McVie, drummer Mick Fleetwood and guitarist/vocalist Peter Green, were joined by a 19 year old blues guitarist, pianist and singer named Jeremy Spencer. Spencer had the ability to play American blues legend Elmore James' songs uncannily like James, a somewhat astonishing fact considering that Spencer was a young white Brit. Fleetwood Mac soon added Danny Kirwan as the third guitarist, and the world was their oyster for a short period of time. However, Green began to mentally unravel due to the pressures of rock success, and left the group. They soldered on for another album sans Green, but during a U.S. tour in 1971, Spencer left his hotel to visit a bookstore in Los Angeles, but did not return for that night's concert. It turned out that he had joined a sect called the Children of God, a group with which he remains affiliated to this day. Green was begged back to finish the tour, but the first incarnation of Fleetwood Mac was on the ropes.The personnel changes made by McVie and Fleetwood eventually created the pop supergroup that to many, eclipsed the memory of the first Fleetwood Mac.

Every now and then you find a wonderful little nugget of folk music, an obscure recording of an unknown artist in some tiny shop or on some esoteric website dedicated to the preservation and promotion of folk culture. Or maybe you receive it as a gift.

Such was the case with this 1999 CD, A Celtic Century. On first glance it looked to be nothing more than a charming local musician (in this case local to Butte, Montana), and his shot at immortality by way of a CD recording. It is much more.